Job Seekers: How Do You Choose A Job Board?

If you’re searching for a new job at the moment, it goes without saying that you’re bound to be spoilt for choice by the sites and options on offer. From individual recruiter sites to the all encompassing job search engines/aggregators like Indeed and good old job boards like Bubble, you’ve got lots of websites to choose from when job hunting – and the right option for you will ultimately depend on your personal needs and preferences.

That said; we know first hand that job boards, particularly niche boards, are the recruitment platform of choice for a lot of job seekers at the moment because of the variety of jobs they offer, along with the fact that they’ll automatically notify you of any new jobs that match your search criteria.

Now, with job boards, even niche or specialist boards, there’s still lots of options to choose from – so how do you know if a job board is actually worth using?

Well, there are a few things you need to consider when it comes to choosing a job board.

1. Brands Advertising:

The first thing you need to consider is the type of brands advertising on the site. Have you heard of any of them before? Are the big names in your industry using this board? If the answer to both questions is ‘no’, and you’re hoping to work for a major brand, you might want to rethink that board.

2. Number Of Jobs:

Think the more vacancies a job board has, the better it is? You might want to think again! You see, when it comes to the big generalist boards like Monster, it makes sense that they’re going to have hundreds of thousands of vacancies because they’re advertising jobs in every sector imaginable. On the other hand, more niche job boards only advertise jobs in certain sectors so it makes sense that they’re going to have fewer jobs available. That said; when reviewing a job board, keep an eye on the number of jobs they’re advertising – while 200 might be too few, 5000 might be way too many to try and sort through – so try and find a happy median.

3. Navigation:

Have a look at the design of the site and try and perform a few searches. Ask yourself how easy the job board is to navigate and try and find the type of jobs you want to apply for. Also consider how easy it is to set up an account and how easy it is to set up job alerts for your criteria – the easier it is to do this, the easier it will ultimately be to apply for jobs.

4. Awards:

When you’re on the job board, have a look around to see if there’s any mentions of the board winning any awards recently. OK, so just because a job board doesn’t have an award, that necessarily mean it’s worth discounting, but an award does indicate it has got respect within the industry. When looking at the awards, look for dates – if the job board won awards a few years ago but hasn’t picked up anything since, it could suggest it’s not as highly regarded within the industry – which could mean it’s not as relevant to you as a job seeker anymore.

5. Additional Content:

Just because a job board is there to advertise jobs, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have anything else to offer. Try and see if the job board has a blog – and look at the type of content it posts out. Is it content that could help your job search or purely self-promotional content there to attract employers? If it’s the former, it suggests the job board is committed to helping job seekers and will go above and beyond its core offering to do this.

Like I said earlier; the right job board for you will ultimately depend on your personal preferences – but hopefully this post should give you a pretty good starting point of things to consider.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1mKNdfU