Weddles.com recently published its 2010 User's Choice Awards, based on year long surveys of recruiters and candidates.“We believe customers count most,” says Weddle’s Publisher and CEO, Peter Weddle. “While pundits can make their own picks, it’s the people who use the sites who really know which are most helpful.”
When considering these top sites, it’s especially relevant to remember that job boards are just over a dozen years old. Twelve years ago, candidates had just a couple of choices other than Monster. These are the thirty best sites of the over 50,000 job boards now in existence, and only Monster existed a dozen years ago.
For the category of general job boards (in alphabetical order):
And let’s not forget the niche job boards:
The top websites were from a number of different industry segments. Health Care was represented by Absolutely Health Care, AllHealthCareJobs.com, HeathCareerWeb.com, and HealthECareers.com . Dice was the only technology job board on the list. Hcareers.com for hospitality jobs made the top 30. AllRetailJobs.com focuses on the retail industry. Weddle’s recognized JobsinLogistics.com for excellence in the logistics vertical.
Additionally, a few job boards focus on the type of companies recruiting. DiversityJobs.com targets companies who seek to actively improve their diversity initiatives in their hiring process. Companies looking for a top site to target Veterans for hiring can look towards VetJobs.com to help find candidates.
Jobbing.com was the only firm with a regional focus to be named in the top 30. Jobing has 48 city or regional sites focused on jobs in a specific geographic area.
Eleven sites were general purpose job sites. The largest sites (Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs all made the list. The aggregators Indeed, SimplyHired, and TopUSAJobs also were awarded with spots on the top 30. Other general purpose sites include DirectEmployers, Job.com, EmploymentGuide, and GetTheJob.com.
Personally, I don’t recommend you use all 30 job boards … that’s just too much for a candidate to keep track of.
Plus, many companies and recruiters advertise the same job on multiple sites. I recommend you choose 3 major boards to follow and 2 additional ones. I’d choose one of the aggregators, one niche board for either industry or demographic, and one niche board for either geography or company type.
Use the tools that a job board gives you to make your search easier and more automated. Most job boards will send emails or RSS feeds for all jobs that meet your specific search criteria. This makes your search more manageable, so you can spend more time customizing your responses, and less time searching the job boards.
Even the top 30 job boards are not the end-all be-all for your job search. I don’t suggest ignoring job boards, nor do I suggest that they should be your only source of job leads. They are just one opportunity channel, and a competitive one at that. Don’t forget about the other opportunity channels that can help you: Networking, social networking, recruiters, government career centers, and inbound marketing (social branding) are all opportunity channels that I recommend today’s job seekers explore.
