Avoiding Job Boards That Are a Waste of Time, Money

There are so many job board alternatives to Indeed and LinkedIn that it can be difficult to tell which are worthwhile and which to disregard. According to Michael Ang, CEO of the recruiting advertising agency JobElephant, there are at least 500 boards alone geared to communities of diverse job candidates.

“There’s a new job board born every minute,” he said, noting that thanks to AI, anyone can create a reputable-looking website to advertise job openings. Despite a slick appearance, however, some sites aren’t worth the advertising investment because few to no job seekers are going there.

Ang said there are recruitment advertising reps who will promise to post your open positions on 20 sites for $500 or even less. But beware — the return on investment (ROI) in a group advertising buy such as this could turn out to be poor because some of the sites are “shell” job boards that get little or no traffic.

Another issue he’s seeing is employers posting hastily to whatever diversity-oriented job boards they can find simply because they’re trying to check a DEI initiative box.

“They’ll be like, ‘Oh, look at all this diversity advertising we’re doing. We’re spending $50,000 a year.’ … And it turns out they reached nobody because they chose poorly,” Ang said.

Job Board Due Diligence

There are two telltale signs that a new job board you’re considering may be one of many that are over-promising and under-delivering:

1. An offer sounds too good to be true. “Unlimited postings for a year for $1,000 … what’s the ROI on that?” Ang asked.
2. If you don’t see other jobs on the site similar to the ones you want to advertise. If your competitors aren’t advertising on this job board, there’s probably a good reason.

Also, be aware that some job boards aren’t as effective as they used to be. “You pick a good vendor today. … But you’ve got to check on [them] every so often because the next year, they might change something where they’re no longer indexed by Google and they’re not getting that SEO traffic they once did,” Ang said.

Each year, JobElephant advertises a multitude of jobs using a variety of sources and it analyzes the impressions and click rates. In its latest round of research, 506,487 job postings were made across 351 sites. One specific finding that Ang highlighted from the company’s 2024 Diversity Media Analytics Report was DiversityJobs.com’s precipitous drop in clicks after 2021. While there could be several factors behind it, he noted that the site changed ownership at that time.

The Very Good and the Very Bad

The report identified job boards that ranged from leaders all the way to zero clicks in the following industries:

• Arts
• Athletics
• Communications
• Construction
• Finance
• Fire services
• Health care
• Higher education
• History
• HR
• Law
• Law enforcement
• Libraries
• Nonprofit
• Political science
• Public relations
• Science
• Social work
• Sociology, and
• Transportation.

Among the non-industry-specific job boards analyzed in the report, these had the best job posting click traffic:

• Diversity-oriented: DiversityandCareer.com (135.8 avg. clicks), DiversityJobBoard.com (22.4 avg. clicks), EOP.com (14.2 avg. clicks)
• African-American: BlackJobs.com (30.7 avg. clicks)
• Asian: NAAAP.org (11.9 avg. clicks)
• Disability: DeafJobWizard.com (22.4 avg. clicks), DSPSjobs.com (16.3 avg. clicks)
• Hispanic: hispanicjobsite.com (15 avg. clicks), HispanicJobs.com (12 avg. clicks), elclasificado.com (10 avg. clicks), ALPFA.org (9.4 avg. clicks)
• Native American: indian-affairs.org (21 avg. clicks), windspeaker.com (13.8 avg. clicks)
• Veterans: VeteranJobMatch.com (186 avg. clicks), MilitaryJob.com (80 avg. clicks)
• Women: PWOCN.org (11.6 avg. clicks), WomensJobList.com (10.2 avg. clicks).

These sites, on the other hand, were at the bottom of the pack because average click traffic ranged from zero to one:

• Diversity-oriented: IMDiversity.com, AAAED.org, WorkplaceDiversity.com, DiversityWorking.com, Diversity.com, EmployDiversity.com, NEMnet.com, MinorityMarketshare.com
• African-American: BlackPerspective.com, NUL.org, BlackCareers.org, hireblack.com, AfricanAmericanHires.com
• Asian: AsianHires.com, Asian-Jobs.com
• Disability: DisabilityConnect.com, dmec.org, AbilityJobs.com, AAPD.com
• Hispanic: hispanicpro.com, AllHispanicJobs.com, Hispanic-Jobs.com, iHispano.com, HispanicDiversity.com, ProDivNet.com, Hispanic-Today.com
• Native American: indianz.com
• Sexuality: pink-jobs.com, LGBTConnect.com, AllLGBTJobs.com
• Veterans: HirePatriots.com, MilitaryVetJobs.com, VeteranJobListings.com, HireVeterans.com, MilitaryHire.com, WorkforWarriors.org, USMilitaryPipeline.com, VeteransConnect.com
• Women: gowifm.org, fortefoundation.org, WeHireWomen.com.