How to Find the Right Job Board for You

There are some 50,000 job boards which target U.S. job seekers and another 50,000 job boards which target job seekers in other countries. If you’re looking for a new job, how do you know which job board is the best for you?

I recommend to job seekers that they look at a bunch of job boards depending upon their interests and location. Monster and Careerbuilder should be two of the boards that virtually all U.S. job seekers use as they’re big and general. Other boards that fall into that “general” category would be Indeed (their postings run on our site after the jobs posted by our employer clients), SimplyHired, JuJu, LinkUp, and TopUSAJobs.

Job seekers should also use at least one board in their relevant niches, so if you’re looking for an internship in marketing in Seattle, use one or two college job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com, one or two marketing job boards, and one or two job boards which focus on Seattle or the State of Washington. You can find these niche boards by running at search at Google, Yahoo, Bing or whatever search engine you use. For a college job board, you can just type in “college job board” (without the quotes) or “internship jobs” or “entry level jobs” and you’ll see on the first page or two a bunch of good sites. Repeat that process for your occupational field, geographic location, and other characteristics which are important to you.

TheLadders falls into a niche that is somewhat like college job boards in that it targets by pay level which is strongly correlated to experience. Few entry-level employees make at least $100,000 per year and those are the only candidates who are allowed to use TheLadders. So if you’re in that $100k income bracket, then TheLadders, 6FigureJobs, and some others are good choices. But if you’re an intern, you won’t be allowed to use those sites.

Finally, a great resource for figuring out if the job board you’ve located is legitimate is to check to see if it is a member of the only trade association for our industry: the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS). It has a roster page that allows you to see a complete list of all member sites and even sort it alphabetically or by industry so you can also use it to locate a job board instead of just using it to verify that the job board you’re thinking of using is legitimate. Scam sites are not allowed to join the Association so you can feel a lot more comfortable about the board you’re using if it is a member than if it is not.