It’s not just a quest for talent. Hiring the right people means you also have to search for reliability, experience and a genuine interest in making your organization better.

It might not be an easy search. But choosing the right job board can help ensure that your hiring campaign isn’t harder, more expensive or more drawn-out than it should be.

What to Look for in a Job Board

Your company’s needs are unique. Other companies may look and feel a lot like yours. But the things you each need and value are different.

How you value these job-board features will be unique to your organization. While you may weigh them a little differently than other companies, each of these mostly standard features will likely play a significant role in your recruitment campaign:

Search Tools

A steady stream of applicants isn’t necessarily a good thing, if you aren’t satisfied with the skill and experience of the resumes pooling in your inbox.

You can often expedite your talent search by searching out job candidates rather than waiting for them to find you.

Not all job boards have resume databases, but those that do can help you draft a shortlist of qualified candidates. When considering if a job board has a resume database, it’s also important to look at the number of active resumes stored in them.

Browsing a database choked with millions of resumes can feel more than a little overwhelming, and online job boards are increasingly rolling out artificial intelligence to help employers sort through it all efficiently.

AI is still a less-common feature of job boards. But sites like ZipRecruiter have AI integrated throughout their platform. Their AI serves up resume matches to you based on tons of data points, including education, experience, career goals and specific search terms.

Applicant Management

Even with powerful search tools to help you round up qualified candidates you’re mutually excited about, you’ll still find yourself with a lot of decisions to make during the hiring process.

An applicant tracking system can help you make thoughtful determinations and keep track of job seekers as they progress through or are eliminated from the recruitment process.

Some job boards have native ATS systems, others offer strong third-party support for popular systems and some boards offer no support at all.

Screening tools make a great companion to applicant trackers. Several popular job boards allow recruiters or hiring managers to come up with screening questions to help pre-qualify candidates before you make time for an interview.

Support and Ease of Use

How much effort does a job site put into helping employers succeed?

It’s an important question to consider, because it can help you understand the ways a job board is capable of supporting you through the hiring process and helping you find employees.

Good customer service is essential almost anywhere. You’ll want to make sure you can get in touch with your chosen job board when you need to do so.

So consider the hours you can reach them by phone, whether you can reach someone by chat and whether they have technical support staff that can help you with software integrations for things like applicant tracking.

More than good customer service and availability, a job board’s marketing tools can also play a critical role in attracting job seekers and hiring efficiently.

Sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter give you solutions for boosting the visibility of your job postings. You can pay a little extra to have your job ads promoted and strategically placed in front of the type of candidates you’re after.

Pricing

A job board’s pricing can dictate just how far your budget goes. And if you haven’t already, it can make you confront the question of just how urgently you need to fill a role in your company.

The top job boards primarily use two pricing models, performance-based and subscriptions, though some boards might combine elements of both.

With pay-per-performance models, it’s usually free to post jobs to start. You’ll only start paying for the service once job seekers start to engage with your job ad. Indeed and SimplyHired are two notable boards that charge you based on performance.

Subscription models are more common for job boards, and their services are often packaged into tiers. Popular job boards that use the subscription formula include ZipRecruiter, Monster, CareerBuilder and LinkedIn.

Choosing a Job-Search Site

Knowing what to look for helps you determine where to find employees of the caliber your organization needs, whether that’s entry-level hourly employees or new leadership.

You’ll find that the top job posting sites have just about everything you need to run an efficient recruitment campaign. But choosing the best fit still takes some work.

Here’s a look at how three of the top job posting sites compare to each other:

ZipRecruiter

It’s one of the biggest job posting sites around, and its resume database is larger than most. It has all of the requisite features, including an applicant tracking system, candidate screening tools and support for third-party ATS platforms.

Where ZipRecruiter stands out the most among competitors is its deep integration of artificial intelligence and its ability to syndicate your job ads to more than 100 partner job boards, all with one click.

Its AI matches qualified candidates to the right job opportunities, inviting them to apply and nudging you to check out their resumes.

CareerBuilder

Born in the mid ’90s, it’s one of the older job sites, and it’s certainly still relevant. Despite falling behind some of the competition, there’s still plenty to like about CareerBuilder.

It has a huge resume database, though it limits the number of monthly searches you can perform. It also has applicant tracking tools and support for third-party ATS platforms.

Like ZipRecruiter, to a degree, it leverages artificial intelligence to help employers identify the most qualified candidates.

Indeed

It’s the largest in terms of sheer traffic and the number of job ads on it. It also has a large resume database and fairly basic applicant tracking software, though it supports third-party solutions.

It can be hard to stand out on Indeed, but this job site lets you pay a little extra to boost the visibility of your job postings. It also has screening tools to help you pick the best candidates out of the bunch.

How to Hire Employees

Here’s a step-by-step look at how to hire employees.

Step 1. Register your organization as an employer.

Step 2. Define the role and its responsibilities.

Step 3. Select a job board to promote your job opening.

Step 4. Source candidates.

Step 5. Interview candidates.

Step 6. Complete due diligence and make a decision.

This Job Board Does It All

Just about all of the major job boards are great at helping employers find employees, but ZipRecruiter is arguably the most rounded of the top job sites.

It does it all, meaning there are no sacrifices in how it empowers you to hire employees.

Not only does ZipRecruiter attract a high volume of job candidates to job openings posted to its board, it also syndicates your jobs to over 100 other boards. So you can post jobs that get shared to high-volume boards, specialized boards and even social media platforms — all in the same campaign.

An AI Recruiter That Helps You Do More

A good job description is one of the best ways to find employees, but advanced artificial intelligence can take your recruitment process to new heights.

On the employer side of things, ZipRecruiter’s AI complements everything your recruiter does. It promotes your job opening to potential candidates and shares your ads to other sites they already frequent.

The AI scans potential candidates’ profiles and resumes for data points such as experience, education, job title, career goals, search history and more. When potential candidates check enough boxes for you, it’ll urge them to apply.

Recruit Employees More Efficiently

Unlike other online job boards, ZipRecruiter won’t limit the number of resumes you can search for each month. And if your job openings are filled before your monthly subscription ends, simply take down those ads and put up new ones in their place — no extra charge.

Test drive ZipRecruiter today with a free trial to learn first-hand how this do-it-all job board drives results with all sorts of ways to find employees online.