your code is hard to understand... use proper styling
but what i understood is you want to limit the no of results frm a sql query to a no from dropdown list... here it is.. improve your query to
select job_title from job_listings where (job_category='$jobcategory' OR job_type='$jobtype' OR company_name='$company') AND (start_date='$startdate' AND end_date='$enddate') limit yourNumber(dropdown list value)