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Where To Post Job Ads

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.

  1. Where do you advertise your job?

  2. How do you make your job stand out from your competitors?

  3. How do you manage your applicants?

Guide To Reducing Recruitment Costs

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:

Highlights And Key Takeaways:

  1. You can target candidates and post a job ad on sites such as Indeed, Total Jobs, and Reed.

  2. The best free job boards include Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn.

Where To Advertise A Job: The Top Job Boards

Indeed

Indeed is a globally popular job board known for its comprehensive reach and ease of use. For employers, it offers the best free job posting option, with the ability to upgrade for more visibility. Its unlimited free job postings are a major draw, allowing businesses of all sizes to advertise their job opportunities. The job posting process on Indeed is user-friendly and integrates seamlessly with applicant tracking systems, making it easier to manage job candidates. Additionally, Indeed’s strong presence in Google search results increases the likelihood of a job post being seen by a wide audience.

Total Jobs

Total Jobs is one of the UK’s leading job boards, offering a vast array of job opportunities across various industries. This platform is particularly advantageous for employers due to its extensive database of job candidates and its efficient applicant tracking system. While it doesn’t offer unlimited free job postings, its paid options are highly effective in reaching a large and relevant audience. Total Jobs also excels in advertising jobs, with options for enhanced job posts and targeted recruitment software, ensuring that employers can contact applicants who best fit their needs.

Telegraph Jobs

Telegraph Jobs is a prestigious job board associated with The Telegraph newspaper, renowned for attracting high-quality candidates. It specialises in executive and senior management roles across various sectors. While it doesn’t offer unlimited free job postings, its reputation and targeted approach make it a valuable platform for employers seeking high-calibre professionals. Telegraph Jobs integrates well with recruitment software, aiding in a streamlined job posting process and effective applicant tracking.

Reed

Reed is one of the UK’s most popular job boards, offering a wide range of job opportunities. It is known for its user-friendly interface and effective search engine, making it easy for employers to find and contact applicants. Reed offers both free and paid job posting options, with a range of services to enhance job visibility and applicant tracking. The site’s popularity ensures a steady flow of job candidates, making it a reliable choice for a variety of recruitment needs.

Monster

Monster Jobs is a well-established job board with a global presence, offering both free and paid job posting options. It’s particularly advantageous for employers due to its powerful search engine and advanced recruitment software, which helps in efficiently sorting and contacting applicants. Monster’s job posting process is streamlined and integrates well with various applicant tracking systems, making it a popular choice for businesses looking to advertise job opportunities effectively.

Jobsite

Jobsite is a leading UK job board that specialises in a wide range of industries. It offers sophisticated applicant tracking and recruitment software, making it easier for employers to manage their recruitment process. While Jobsite doesn’t offer unlimited free job postings, its paid options are highly effective, with the ability to reach a large pool of job candidates. The platform is particularly beneficial for employers looking to target specific sectors or job roles.

Jobstoday

Jobstoday is a versatile job board that caters to a wide range of industries and sectors. It offers a straightforward job posting process, allowing employers to easily advertise their vacancies. While Jobstoday doesn’t provide unlimited free job postings, it does offer competitively priced options with good visibility. The platform is effective for employers who want to reach a diverse range of job candidates quickly and efficiently.

Gumtree

Gumtree Jobs, primarily known as a classified ads site, also offers a platform for job postings. It’s particularly useful for local job advertising and is considered one of the best free job posting options for small businesses and startups. Gumtree allows employers to post job vacancies with ease and reach a wide, diverse audience. Its straightforward interface makes it simple to manage job posts and contact applicants directly.

The Guardian Jobs

The Guardian Jobs is associated with The Guardian newspaper and is known for attracting a well-educated and professional audience. It offers targeted advertising options for job vacancies, ensuring that job posts are seen by relevant candidates. While it doesn’t offer unlimited free job postings, its association with a leading UK newspaper gives added prestige and reach, making it a popular choice for employers in sectors like education, government, and the arts.

Fish4Jobs

Fish4Jobs is a popular UK job board known for its wide variety of job listings. It offers effective job posting options and integrates well with applicant tracking systems. While Fish4Jobs doesn’t offer unlimited free job postings, it provides a straightforward job posting process and has a strong search engine, ensuring that job vacancies are visible and easily accessible to a large number of job seekers.

CV Library

CV Library is one of the UK’s fastest-growing job boards, with a vast database of CVs. This platform allows employers to not only post jobs but also search through a large pool of CVs, making it easier to find suitable candidates. It offers both free and paid job posting options and is known for its efficient applicant tracking system. CV Library’s strong presence in Google search results also helps in maximising the visibility of job vacancies.

Universal Jobmatch (Jobcentre Plus)

Universal Jobmatch, provided by Jobcentre Plus, is a government-run job board, offering free job postings for employers. This platform is particularly advantageous for reaching a wide range of job seekers, including those who may not use traditional job boards. It’s known for its straightforward job posting process and is particularly useful for companies looking to fulfil basic employment needs or recruit for entry-level positions. As it’s integrated with the UK government’s job search efforts, job posts on Universal Jobmatch also tend to perform well in Google search results, ensuring good visibility among job candidates actively seeking new opportunities.

Download Job Advert Template

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.

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:

  1. Include detail in your job advert and job description about the job. Be as specific as you can be.

  2. Use an accurate job title so your job appears in job alert emails

  3. Have above industry pay.

  4. Include a greater number of days holiday (or even unlimited holiday).

  5. 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:

WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO ADVERTISE A JOB UK?

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.

WHICH WEBSITE IS BEST FOR JOBS IN UK?

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.

WHERE CAN I POST A JOB FOR FREE UK?

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.

WHAT IS THE BEST WEBSITE TO ADVERTISE FOR JOBS?

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.

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