Top Tech Job Boards

The 10th Annual Source of Hire Study by CareerXroads provides an interesting perspective on the current state of hiring. While largely cumbersome and cluttered with spam, job boards still accounted for nearly 25% of hiring in 2010. That number surprised us. We hear stories every day from job seekers who are bypassing job boards altogether because they have come to expect the “black hole” syndrome. The fact of the matter is that job boards were not only second, but took a big leap to get there. Job boards accounted for just over 13% of hires in 2009. The biggest winners in this survey were Monster and CareerBuilder. CareerXroads states that just under 89% of companies surveyed hired at least one person from Monster, and just under 86% hired one person from CareerBuilder. The survey does not specify what type of position each company hired, but I would be surprised if the high percentage came from tech hires. I express confidence in this as most of the tech professionals I know would not be cruising Monster or CareerBuilder looking for a job. Just to be sure I did my own due diligence by running a search on each site. On Monster, I searched for Systems Engineer positions in the city of San Francisco. Page one yielded 25 results, of which 13 were the actual company (not a third party). Those 13 postings were from 9 different companies, but were as old as 57 days. I then proceeded to run a search on CareerBuilder. CareerBuilder made Monster look amazing. They made them look amazing by being so amazingly terrible. It is hard to imagine any organization paying them to post a Systems Engineering position in San Francisco. Out of 25 postings on page one, 3 were from a third party. Out of the third party postings half were from CyberCoders and Robert Half. Nothing against those organizations or CareerBuilder, but top Systems Engineers are not going to rely on that as a source for finding a new job. Monster showed slightly better results, but there are still questions about which job boards a tech professional can go to for great jobs.

We set out to provide answers by looking at sites focused on different segments of the tech continuum. We looked at the national boards that post jobs from everyone and everywhere (CareerBuilder and Monster were left off based on the research above). We also did deeper research to find  specialized tech job boards. This research was conducted through the lens of a Systems Engineer in San Francisco. There are several opportunities open today for that demographic. Now we want to see what the best source is in attracting this audience. The results are shown in no particular order.

Big Names (Google Page Rank):

1. Dice.com (7): Dice is the national tech board claiming the most traffic. Is bigger better? A search for Systems Engineering positions in the city of San Francisco yielded 608 positions. None of these positions were over 30 days old. In addition, 54 of the first 90 postings were from the actual employer (not a third party). Of these, big employers consistently popped up like Dolby Labs, Google, HP, Macy’s.com, Symantec, and Williams-Sonoma. Our assessment on Dice is that it is a quantity game used largely by enterprise employers and recruiting agencies. Dice makes more money the more postings they have on the site. They seem to be doing well with that. However, our score is based on the candidate experience. For that we give Dice a C.

2. Craigslist.org (7): Craigslist has made a mint by automating the newspaper classifieds. Their performance on job postings is no different. Craigslist keeps things basic, and that concept can be good for job seekers. Our search of Craigslist started with the city of San Francisco and the Systems/Network tab under jobs. There are no searches to run, and you can get where you want to go in 2-3 clicks. The first page of jobs that comes up shows 100 total Systems/Network positions in San Francisco posted as long ago as three weeks. Using the example of a Systems Engineer, you have to pick through the 100 postings. There are several postings that are not the type of position a Systems Engineer would look for. There are some good postings with reputable companies, but it may take more digging to get to them. The easy UI lends a hand to the job seeker, but weeding through the postings may take more time even with a keyword search. That said, we give Craigslist a C+.

3. Linkedin.com (9): Linkedin is the standard for online professional networking today. Thus, it makes sense that they would enable job postings on their platform. A search for Systems Engineering positions in San Francisco yielded 7 results dating as far as back as three weeks. Certainly you can find more than 7 applicable postings if you dig deeper. However, these were the specific opportunities that matched our search. The good news is that all seven opportunities are with viable companies. The benefit to a posting on Linkedin is that you can also see the profile of the person that posted it, and if you have a connection to them. Our view is that Linkedin has the most potential to benefit the job seeker. The job postings are good, and job seekers can see more about the person who posted it. For those reasons we give Linkedin a B.

4. Indeed.com (8): Indeed is known as a popular aggregator for job postings. That is apparent when you run a Systems Engineer search for San Francisco. We found 3,521 posting that ran back as far as 27 days. This is an amazing number considering that the city of San Francisco will see a total of 32,000 job openings this year. That would make Systems Engineers 10% of that number in just the past month. This is obviously not likely. The fluff is primarily due to some jobs being out of the area or not ones applicable to the search. This indicates that the job seeker will have a high number of postings to sift through. As we sift as a job seeker would we find that 7 of the top 15 posters in this search are third party companies. Indeed does keep a nice counter on the side that tells you that 733 of the posted jobs in this search are from third party recruiters. The real bonus for job seekers is that it is easy to change your search by salary, title, company, location, and job type. The bad news is that several of the postings we clicked on took us to the career page of a company, not a specific job. One of the examples was a Systems Engineering job at Zynga. We clicked on it and it launched to a career page for Zynga with literally hundreds of jobs on it. Indeed has lots of information available, easy search filters, and good companies posted on the site. The challenge is that hours can be lost, and there is no real barometer to know when and how you may receive feedback. We are giving Indeed a B-.

5. Simplyhired.com (7): Simplyhired bills itself as job search made simple. We set out to see if it was simple AND effective for the job seeker. We ran the search of the Systems Engineer in San Francisco to find 265 postings. Of these, 43 of the postings were from Wells Fargo. Obviously, this is a very common job title at the large consumer bank. There is a nice sidebar on Simplyhired where job seekers can dial in their search by date posted, title, company, etc. You can even exclude job boards and third party recruiters if you would like. As we dialed in our search specific to Systems Engineers, we looked at 30 positions. Out of the 30 postings we looked at 10 were from third party recruiters and 5 were from Wells Fargo. Another factor we considered was that 19 of the 30 postings were over 30 days old. This is definitely an obstacle in the mind of the job seeker. The job seeker views an older posting as less appealing than others. There are two reasons for this: 1. the company is already well into the hiring process, or 2. The company is taking their time and feedback will be hard to obtain. To finalize a grade we looked closer at the actual companies and postings. The majority of the postings are from enterprise-level companies or a third party. This can indicate slow feedback much of the time. While SimplyHired does make job search simple, that may not matter if you don’t like what you are searching. Some may and some may not. For that reason we gave them a C.

6. TheLadders (7): As the job markets heat up, it is hard to believe that a job board that requires job seekers to pay a membership fee will thrive. That is the big challenge that TheLadders will face. They may already be facing it. Trying to run a job search on the site is futile. Once you locate a job that you like you are asked to sign up for a membership. Many top candidates will stop right there, especially the passive ones. TheLadders makes the promise of a job that pays $100K. That is a great pitch, but I’m not sure that caliber of candidate needs to pay for a top position. Let’s look at the case of the Systems Engineer in San Francisco. TheLadders claims to have 238 positions that fit that description. However, you are prompted to buy a membership to see any of them. TheLadders does offer some top of the line advice and articles along with the job posting. We just don’t see how they will outweigh the requirement of paying to see job postings. There are plenty of free job advice sites, job posting sites, and books for people to read. For that reason, we give TheLadders a D.

Specialized Sites (Page Rank):

After the results from the big brands in tech job boards, we were excited to take a look at some of the less known commercially. While less known commercially, some of these sites are better known in the tech world. Let’s see how they stack up. These are also in no particular order:

1. Jobs.37signals.com (5): 37signals touts that their job board has brought the brightest and best talent to top companies like Apple and Facebook. This claim is sure to attract tech professionals to dig a little deeper into the site. 37signals has the jobs divided into Programming, Design, Business/Exec, iPhone Development, and Miscellaneous on the front page. We were quick to find that the example of a Systems Engineer would not be the best for 37signals. The majority of the positions on the site are dedicated to Design and Programming. That said, they have 7 jobs in Design and 21 in Programming specific to San Francisco. The job posters include some interesting startups like Path and Identified. Overall, the site is very easy to navigate and basic in nature. It has a specialized approach and defined target audience. There is a lack of Systems Engineering postings on the site, but we still give the site a B for what it is.

2. Startupers.com (4): Startupers is a job board run out of San Francisco that is dedicated to the startup community. From the time you log on it is clear that startup talent is the target market. They use some humor in their approach, while having an easy to use interface. When we reviewed the site we saw 41 postings within the last month for San Francisco specifically. The primary base of jobs that are available on the site were for Programmers and Designers. This was very similar to the jobs posted on jobs.37signals.com. However, there were different customers located on Startupers. Some notable companies were Flite and ModCloth. The other interesting aspects of Startupers is that you can post your resume for people to view and there is a chat room for people to communicate. The site does not appear geared for the Systems Engineering example we have used, but it does seem effective and attractive for Designers and Programmers interested in top startups. On that basis, we gave them a B+.

3. Startuply.com (6): Startuply is another job board focused specifically on startups. In fact, they even have the stage of funding as a search option for those interested in that level of specificity. A quick search for San Francisco boasts 118 jobs. Some of these are in the East Bay as you can only narrow the search to 10 miles. As we took a look at the jobs it was apparent that there are some very marketable startups posting jobs on the site. That should be very attractive to job seekers who are looking for Design and Programming jobs within a startup in San Francisco. Crowdcast and Zendesk are a few interesting startups that we saw posting jobs on the site. Again, this does not appear to be a site supporting the Systems Engineering example, but it is a solid resource for the Design and Programming community. As a result, we gave them a B.

4. Jobs.github.com (6): This job board is an offshoot of the social coding website Github. Github is the site that gives them a page rank of 6. We looked at this example as the popularity of Github has been on the rise in recent months. We knew that the examples may be more specific to Design and Programming once again, but wanted to see how it would compare to the other specialized job boards we had reviewed. Our quick search found that there were 51 jobs posted for San Francisco. A big chunk of those jobs were for Dolby Labs and ROBLOX. Also, we found it difficult to narrow the search to just the city of San Francisco. There were jobs as far south as Sunnyvale. The website does offer postings nationally, and appears to be cranking this service up. However, we were a bit disappointed by what we found so far. We have been very excited about the core services of social coding that Github itself offers, but the job board still needs work. For that reason we gave them a C.

After reviewing the 10 sites (really 12 with CareerBuilder and Monster), it is easy to see that you should spend time on specialty sites if you can. If we were going out to look for a job through job boards today it would be important to go to two places first: 1. Linkedin and 2. Specialty sites within your industry. We utilized the example of the Systems Engineer for this article and came up short on the specialty sites. With some more digging, I am certain we can find something specific to that audience. What we did find was a huge market for Design and Programming postings. The big name job boards will continue to have a place in the market due to their size and coverage. Job seekers simply have to know how to use those sites and what to expect. Be very targeted when using them, and limit the amount of time you spend there.

We hope that some job seekers find this information useful, and are always open to ideas on new job boards or differing opinions on the ones we have reviewed!