| | | |  | | When is a job board not a job board?There are more than 1200 job boards in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Are they all real job boards? In this article we help you pick your way through all these job boards to find the best ones to advertise your vacancies. |
What is a job board?A job board or job site is simply a website that advertises job vacancies. That's it. Job boards might provide other services, such as CV databases, surveys, career resources and so on but, in the end, all of these things are only additional services to the core function of job advertising. When is a job board not a job board?While all these 1200 job boards might all be advertising jobs, they won't all be worth advertising on. Not all job boards are the same. Some are good, some are bad; some are brand new and some are sad. And some job boards are not really job boards at all. So, when is a job board not a job board? 1: When a job board is a recruitment agency in disguise
It looks like a job board. It smells like a job board. It has a job board-sounding name. It even has lots of ads from different recruitment agencies. It's a job board, right? Well, maybe not. More and more recruitment consultancies and agencies are getting into the job board game. There is nothing wrong with this. Competition is good. However, a problem arises when such recruitment consultant job boards “fail to mention” that they are actually a recruitment agency or that the job board is owned and operated by a recruitment agency. As an advertiser (and even more so as a candidate) you want to know exactly what you are signing up for. 2: When a job board is a journal or trade magazine in disguise
Professional journals and trade magazines often have job boards that you can advertise on. The problem here is that to advertise on the job board you might find that you have to buy a recruitment ad in the journal or magazine. In other words, it's not job board advertising. It's a print advertising with an online ad stuck on. If you want to advertise your job online, you should be able to do so without having to buy a print at. Of course, there are many professional journals and trade magazines that do offer real job boards with real job board advertising (that you can buy without having to buy the print ad). In fact, you'll find quite a number of such real job boards on whatjobsite. 3: When a job board is another job board in disguise
Increasingly, job board owners are launching sub-sites or sub-brands. There are many good reasons for this. For example, a finance job board might launch a sub-job board to advertise “mortgage” finance jobs. Unfortunately, many job board networks set up new web sites and put the same jobs on them. It's the same site with another name. In our research for this article we found a specialist finance job board whose first job on the homepage was for an engineer. Such a site is useful neither to candidates nor advertisers. We only feature "core" sites on whatjobsite. 4: When a job board is an aggregator
Aggregators are job boards that work a little bit like Google. They search other job boards for job advertisements and then post them on their own site. With 1200 job boards to trawl through it could be a beneficial service, right? Well, maybe for candidates. But not for smaller employers —in our view. Aggregators have only entered the market in the last couple of years, so audiences for them is still uncertain. They also face signifcant problems with duplicated jobs. And besides, if you advertise on one of the sites that the aggregator draws jobs from, you'll appear there anyway. 5: When a job board is not really a job board
You come across them all the time. The site says “Suchandsuchjobs.com is the no.1 leading site for such and such jobs... “ The only thing is, there are only fifteen jobs on the site. There's no company information. There's no telephone number. No business address. And on one side of the home page there is a sprinking of Google ads for other better job boards. It's not a job board. It's somebody playing in their bedroom. Such sites are best avoided. Choosing a job board.We hope we have given you an indication of the things to look out for when looking at job boards. Do check the search engines, but keep our pointers above in mind. Number one positioning in Google is not always a sign of quality. But also ask your staff where they find jobs. Get recommendations. See where other companies are advertising. And, of course, use whatjobsite. We've checked all our job boards for the issues above. We don't have every job board, but every one we have is real. Article updated: January 2008. For more information on topics covered here, please visit the following links:
We hope our articles are of help and assistance to you. If you would like to comment on any of them or on whatjobsite in general, please click here to email us. To find the right job sites and job boards to advertise your vacancies, use the search box above. To find specialist or niche job sites to advertise your vacancies click here. Advice home | Online Recruitment | Job sites & job boards | Job Vacancy Advertising | 
