Recruitment is a critical component to any business because if you’re hiring the wrong people then your business will suffer in more ways than one. Poor hires mean lower productivity and sometimes even lower revenue, and ultimately poor hires lead to high turnover and attrition rates and low retention rates. [What do we mean by “poor hires”? Well, poor hires would be considered potentially lower quality candidates (maybe ones with less experience than you need to do a particular job well) or they could simply be hires that don’t align with your employer brand or company culture.]
However, the recruitment department isn’t typically given a very large budget to reach and recruit the right hires. More often than not, recruitment is seen as a back-office business function – an expense, as you will – rather than the business-driving investment that it truly is. So, whether your recruitment budget reflects your company’s focus on hiring the right people or not, it’s usually important to understand what free job posting options exist for you, so that you can reach more top talent with less money.
So, let’s review some of the best free job posting sites that you should consider taking advantage of in 2018:
- Indeed.com – One of the largest job aggregators and top sources for job seekers online, Indeed does offer the option to post jobs for free on their site. However, they also recommend sponsoring your jobs for extra exposure.
- Glassdoor.com – Another top online site for job seekers, Glassdoor typically offers PPC (pay-per-click) job sponsorship and/or job slot opportunities, but they do have an initial offer to new employers to post 10 jobs for free for 7 days, so take advantage of that if you haven’t already!
- ZipRecruiter.com – This unique job site generally offers paid subscriptions, either monthly or annually, to advertise your jobs. However, they do offer free trials, so make sure you look into that first as a test if you’re new to ZipRecruiter.
- TheLadders.com – This job site is geared more towards the higher-level, more experienced candidates that you need to reach (average salary of $100k+ and typically 10+ years of experience), so this may not be the job board for everyone’s hiring needs, but if it fits your target candidate profile, then there’s a free basic job posting option for you to post as many jobs as you want (and of course, there are other paid subscription options that offer more features and exposure).
- FlexJobs.com – While the audience of FlexJobs focuses on flexible work opportunities for job seekers (freelance work, part-time jobs, temp/contract opportunities, telecommuting jobs, etc.) and may not be a fit for every employer, they do offer completely free job posting to all employers. Simply request your invite to get started!
- JobrApp.com – Jobr, often referred to as the “Tinder for Jobs” was among the first app-based job search platforms to really take off, and it is now owned by Monster.com. Jobr offers a free job posting to start, and free trials for all of their paid subscription options.
- Craigslist.org – For local needs or more blue collar hiring needs, Craigslist is often a good choice to post your job. Some Craigslist postings are completely free, while others range from $7 to $75 each, depending on the location of your job posting.
- Facebook Job Board – Many don’t know that Facebook actually has its own job board, and it’s completely free to post your jobs to! However, you must be an admin of your company Facebook page in order to post jobs as your company and to link that to your company’s Facebook page. We’ve also seen that the Facebook Job Board audience is typically best for more blue collar type and/or part-time roles.
- Google for Jobs – Another one that many may not be aware of, but since Google’s recent announcement of their job postings within search results – Google for Jobs – you can now get your jobs posted to Google at no cost! There are a couple ways to get your jobs on Google – the best of which is to ensure the HTML of your careers site and job pages on your site are implemented to Google’s requirements (though, this is a more technical implementation). Alternatively, you can post your job (for free, or at a cost) to any of the integrated third-party job sites and that site will automatically push your job to Google, as well.
While this is just a handful of the top sites that you should consider posting your jobs for free to this year, there are hundreds of other job sites out there that offer free job posting options (i.e. JobSpider, PostJobFree, MightyRecruiter, Hubstaff Talent, Jobxoom, Doostang, and many more). However, you may notice that some of these you’ve never heard of. It’s worth noting that the job board industry is highly incestuous – what I mean by this is that, for the most part, if you post your jobs to any of the big few job boards and job aggregators (i.e. Indeed, Glassdoor, Jobs2Careers, ZipRecruiter, Monster, CareerBuilder), then your jobs are likely going out to hundreds, if not thousands, of other job boards automatically.
Most major job boards have a network of hundreds to thousands of sites that they push their jobs out to in order to get your jobs more local and niche exposure opportunities. And, on the flip side, most of the hundreds to thousands of local and niche job boards that exist out there are scraping (or, pulling in) job postings from the major few job boards to make their site look like it has more jobs. In reality, you shouldn’t have to post your job to any more than 10 (and usually, a lot less) sites at any given time in order to reach and recruit the candidates that you need. If you’re posting your jobs to more than 10 sites consistently, you may want to reconsider your recruitment marketing strategy.
So, if your in recruitment and you need assistance reaching and recruiting the right talent to drive your business forward, it’s critical that you have a solid recruitment marketing strategy in place. Most sophisticated recruitment strategies do also incorporate free job posting options to get the most out of your recruitment budget.
If you need help planning, managing or executing a recruitment marketing strategy or reaching and recruiting the right hires, contact us at The MLE Agency today – we can help!