You might try Mamba's version. It has quite a few updates from the version you're using....
https://github.com/mambax7/jobsIt should fix the pass-by-reference issues you're seeing.
Here's a summary of the changes:
4.4 RC 4 [NOT RELEASED] - Dev: Xoops 2.5.9, PHP 7.2.3
================================================
- moved all images, CSS, and JS files to /assets (mamba)
- renamed .html Smarty templates to .tpl (mamba)
- XOOPS 2.5.9, PHP 7 (mamba)
- Converted to XOOPS 2.5.8 Admin GUI (Mamba)
- removed @version (mamba)
- PSR-2 code cosmetics (mamba)
- addNavigation(basename(__FILE__)) (mamba)
- dirname(__FILE__) to __DIR__ (mamba)
- replaced < br /> with < br > (mamba)
- Unnecessary double quotes (mamba)
- reference mismatch (mamba)
- Hardening to type safe (mamba)
- update Help (mamba)
- changed _handler to Handler (mamba)
- removed '/' from void HTML elements (
,
, etc) (mamba)
- HTML 5: removed 'selected' and 'checked' (mamba)
- updated file headers for consistency (mamba)
- renamed several $indexAdmin with $adminObject for consistency (mamba)
- Updates for PayPal changes (zyspec)
- added Contributing.md (mamba)
- started conversion to XMF (mamba)
- updated addInfoBoxLine entries (mamba)
- displayNavigation(basename(__FILE__)) (mamba)
- changed to ->displayButton('left') (mamba)
4.4 RC3 [2014-02-19]
=================================================
- redesigned Type Management - added tables (mamba)
- small source code changes related to PSR-2 (mamba)
- added folder/file checker