Where To Post Job Ads
Gone are the days where you called up your local recruitment agency to let them know about your latest job opening. The norm now is to advertise your job online. This raises a number of questions about where to post job openings:
Approximately 300,000 companies advertise jobs online in the UK.
- Where do you advertise your job?
- How do you make your job stand out from your competitors?
- How do you manage your applicants?
For most industries, advertising on a general job board will be the most appropriate. There are always exceptions (IT being a big one – will cover further down). If you work within recruitment, it is likely that you have come across these 11, well-known job boards. The thing is that they aren’t all equal, as you will see later.
Quick Links:
- Where To Advertise A Job: The Top Job Boards
- Top 20 Popular Job Posting Sites
- Making You Job Posts Stand Out
- Conclusions On Where To Post Jobs
- Job Listing FAQs
Highlights And Key Takeaways:
- You can target candidates and post a job ad on sites such as Indeed, Total Jobs, and Reed.
- The best free job boards include Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn.
Where To Advertise A Job: The Top Job Boards
Indeed
Total Jobs
Telegraph Jobs
Reed
Monster
Jobsite
Jobstoday
Gumtree
The Guardian Jobs
Fish4Jobs
CV Library
Universal Jobmatch (Jobcentre Plus)
Are you surprised by any of them?
The top 10 job boards make up around 66% of all jobs advertised. The biggest shock might be that the Guardian doesn’t feature in the top 20 job boards by volume. The most likely reason is that unless you are buying a high volume of adverts with them, they are a prohibitively expensive job posting site to work with.
Top 20 Popular Job Posting Sites
The list of the top 20 paid and free job boards, with market share, are:
Rank | Job board | Percentage of Jobs Advertised |
1 | Jobcentre Plus* | 13.29% |
2 | LinkedIn* | 9.21% |
3 | NewsQuest Group (any of their newspapers) | 8.23% |
4 | Indeed* | 7.30% |
5 | Reed* | 5.76% |
6 | The Telegraph Jobs* | 5.56% |
7 | Total Jobs* | 5.43% |
8 | Regional Engineering Jobs | 4.27% |
9 | CvLibrary* | 3.54% |
10 | Fish4Jobs* | 3.52% |
11 | JobSite* | 2.91% |
12 | Express and Star | 2.54% |
13 | Monster Jobs* | 2.13% |
14 | Job Serve | 1.94% |
15 | British Jobs | 1.68% |
16 | Engineer Board | 1.44% |
17 | Cw Jobs | 1.04% |
18 | Career Builder | 1.02% |
19 | Leisure Jobs | 0.87% |
20 | Engineering Jobs | 0.82% |
*Hiring People work with these sites – 8 out of the top 10!
Should You Advertise On More Than One Job Listings Site?
I will try to answer this question in an unbiased fashion, as we would naturally want you to advertise your job across multiple sites with us.
Read Should I advertise My Job On More Than One Site?
Certains sites, such as TotalJobs, Reed and Indeed will be visited by a large percentage of job seekers. The issue is that if your job postings are only on one of those job board sites, it is unlikely that all job seekers will be reviewing all sites, reducing your pool of quality applicants.
What About The Quality Of Applicants?
Our experience is that applicants from Universal Jobmatch are generally less qualified candidates than other (paid) sites; Universal Jobmatch offers free job postings for employers, and we include it as part of our packages (it is one of the other job boards your job gets posted to).
The main reason we believe for the lower quality applicant is due to the targets which job seekers have in terms of the number of jobs to apply to a week. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t great applicants through Universal Jobmatch, you might just have to spend more time going through CVs to find potential candidates of a high quality.
IT, Leisure, And Engineering Jobs
Out of the top twenty job sites, there are three sectors which stand out as having industry-specific job sites, with Engineering being the most prominent. So it is advisable to post jobs on those paid and free posting sites, if you have an appropriate job to advertise on one of them. Even though we don’t include them in our standard job advertising packages, if you give us a call, we can put together a bespoke job advertising solution for you.
Making Your Job Posts Stand Out
There are literally millions of jobs advertised online at any point in time, so how do you get your job postings to stand out? Here are a few ideas:
- Include detail in your job advert and job description about the job. Be as specific as you can be.
- Use an accurate job title so your job appears in job alert emails
- Have above industry pay.
- Include a greater number of days holiday (or even unlimited holiday).
- Advertise your job title on multiple locations, including paid (sponsored jobs) and free job boards, job aggregator sites, social media, and your company website.
Read about free job posting sites in our article How Do Free Job Advertisements Stack Up?
Managing Applicants
If you click this link you will find that the average job seeker has to apply to 27 jobs to get an interview, meaning that if you invite 3 people in, you would on average have 81 applicants per position, which is great for you as you will have lots of choices, but it then leads to the question of how do you manage so many applicants? The answer is an applicant tracking system (ATS). Included with our fees is access to our ATS.
An ATS allows you or your hiring manager to:
- Flag applicants who you wish to follow up with
- Email applicants directly (instead of going between different systems)
- Make notes against applicants, including saving them for future openings
Conclusions On Where To Post Jobs
You may have noticed that I haven’t suggested advertising your job directly on your website. For most businesses, unless you are a very well known brand, it is unlikely that you will get enough applicants, so please ignore this comment! For most businesses, advertising your job on the UK’s leading job sites will result in a good number of applicants for your jobs. However, top candidates may visit your career site to find out about your employer brand and employment options, such as do your support remote workers. So, there is value to post a job ad there, even though it may not directly drive more candidates your way.
Job Listing FAQs
Here we answer your questions on where to post jobs’ ads:
In the UK, the best place to advertise a job often depends on the specific role and industry. Popular job posting sites include Indeed, Reed.co.uk, and Totaljobs. These platforms are renowned for attracting a large number of relevant candidates across various sectors. Additionally, LinkedIn is increasingly popular for professional roles, offering both paid and organic reach to potential job applicants. For more specialised roles, niche job boards specific to the industry can be highly effective. Don’t forget to leverage your company’s careers page as well, as it can attract candidates who are specifically interested in your organisation.
Indeed and Reed.co.uk are among the best job boards in the UK for a broad range of job listings. Indeed, in particular, aggregates job listings from various sources, making it a comprehensive job portal for candidates. For tech and digital roles, websites like CWJobs and Dice can be more targeted. For higher-level positions, LinkedIn is invaluable due to its networking aspect and the ability to headhunt passive candidates who might not be actively searching on other job sites.
Many popular job posting sites offer options to post jobs for free. Indeed allows employers to post jobs for free, with the option to pay for increased visibility. Other job sites like Glassdoor also offer free job postings. LinkedIn allows for limited free job postings and is a great platform for reaching out to professionals. Additionally, utilising your company’s social media channels and careers page can be an effective, cost-free method of reaching potential job applicants.
The best website to advertise for jobs often depends on the type of job and the target audience. For a wide reach, Indeed is highly recommended due to its status as a comprehensive job portal. LinkedIn is ideal for professional roles and for tapping into a network of passive candidates. For more niche roles, industry-specific job boards can be the most effective. Additionally, integrating jobs Google for Jobs by formatting your careers page listings correctly can significantly increase the visibility of your job postings.