- Hiring sites are the most common sources of job applications for employers.
- The best hiring sites allow you to attract applicants with little or no financial investment.
- Some free sites give you the option to pay to promote your posting.
- Employers can choose from general and specialty niche hiring sites.
Filling open positions with qualified candidates as quickly as possible is vital to the ongoing success of your business. Endless vacancies can negatively impact the customer experience as shorthanded companies often struggle to deliver first-rate service. Plus, staffing problems leave your team overburdened and stressed, which can decrease workplace morale and lead to even more employee turnover.
Because hiring is so important, you need to find ways to promote your open positions and encourage job seekers to apply. Online hiring sites can allow you to accomplish this goal. A 2018 study found that job boards and career sites accounted for roughly 84 percent of all job applications completed worldwide.1 To advertise an open position, you have dozens of options. This list contains some of the best free and low-cost sites to consider as you compare your options.
Tetiana Yurchenko / Shutterstock1. Indeed
Boasting 250 million registered users, Indeed offers a huge pool of potential applicants for all types of job openings. As an employer, you can register for a hiring account and post a job opening for free. The site also allows you to pay to promote your job listing at any time. This way, you can begin with the no-cost option and only spend money if you need to increase visibility due to a lack of qualified applicants. Paid subscribers get access to a variety of hiring tools that can benefit small businesses lacking human resources departments.2
2. Talent.com
Another hiring site with proven name recognition is Talent.com. The website gives you access to more than 28 million unique visitors per month, and the intuitive interface makes posting a new job incredibly easy. Like Indeed, Talent.com offers an unlimited number of free basic job listings. If you want to speed up the search for applicants, you can pay for an Advanced listing that puts your job at the top of the page, potentially giving you 10 times more visibility.3
3. Handshake
If you have entry-level positions to fill, Handshake may be the best hiring site for your needs. This job website caters to undergraduate and graduate students who are preparing to graduate or have recently graduated. With the Standard service, you can advertise your job to a highly diverse pool of more than nine million candidates for free. Large companies who need to hire hundreds or thousands of employees can opt for the Premium account, which features a customized monthly fee based on corporations’ needs.4
4. HospitalRecruiting.com
For businesses and institutions plagued by the ongoing shortage of physicians, nurses and allied health professionals, HospitalRecruiting.com is a powerful solution. This job site focuses solely on physician and health care jobs and provides in-depth analytics that make it easier for you to see how many people have reviewed your ad. In addition, you get the benefits of a candidate tracking system to help you find the perfect hire. It costs $60 to post a single job for 90 days, much lower than the price for many other specialty healthcare job sites.5
5. Job Spider
Job Spider is a relatively unknown hiring site owned by Craigslist. While it doesn’t boast the traffic many competitors do, it has some advantages that make it a valuable resource for employers. Job postings are always free, and once you sign up, you can browse resumes of all users and contact them directly about your open positions. Best of all, many job listing aggregators share Job Spider job listings, allowing your posting to reach a much wider audience with no additional cost to your company.6
6. Ladders
Do you need to find highly skilled candidates to complete your management team? Ladders may be the site for you. This job site only features postings for jobs that pay annual salaries of $100,000 or more. As a result, roughly 89 percent of users hold at least a bachelor’s degree and have an average of 15 years of experience in their respective fields. You can post a basic job listing for free or choose one of the paid tiers to unlock other benefits like promoted listings and candidate tracking tools.7
7. AngelList
AngelList’s mission is to connect startups with qualified candidates who want to get in on the ground floor of new enterprises. If you’re launching or scaling a new business, you can use the site to find candidates for many kinds of jobs. However, users tend to come from tech backgrounds. Basic job postings are free to list, and the straightforward process allows most employers to create a job ad from start to finish in just 10 minutes.8
8. LinkedIn
Home to more than 690 million members, LinkedIn is a social media site that’s one of the most popular places for online networking. LinkedIn Recruiter is a service offered by the site that allows you to post a job for free with the option to upgrade and promote it for an additional fee. The site also enables you to use connections that you generate with your LinkedIn profile to contact other users who might be a good fit for your job and invite them to apply.9
9. Chegg Internships
Providing paid internships is an effective way to fill open positions and build relationships with students who may become high-quality candidates for permanent jobs after graduation. Even if you’ve never developed an internship program before, Chegg Internships can help you launch one and match you with students who are eager to gain experience working for your company. The site is completely free for both internship seekers and employers, and it offers many resources that you can refer to while designing your internship opportunities.10
10. Learn4Good
Learn4Good is a lesser-known site that connects students with potential post-secondary education opportunities and employers with candidates. One of its main selling points is that users can search for jobs by required education and experience level, meaning more of the inquiries you receive are likely to be from qualified candidates. As an employer, you can post up to 20 jobs for free every 6 months. The flexible rules allow you to use all 20 of your free postings at one time or to spread them out as needed.11
11. PostJobFree
PostJobFree does more than just allow you to post an unlimited number of job openings without paying a thing. It also distributes your postings to aggregators to ensure that many people see your listing. As one of the oldest hiring sites on the internet, PostJobFree ranks highly in Google search results, giving you opportunities to attract candidates hunting for jobs like yours. To make the most of this site, be sure to use keywords that relate to your position in your job description.12
12. Hubstaff Talent
If you’re striving to shift more to virtual work or need to fill a virtual position, look no further than Hubstaff Talent. This site caters solely to job seekers who wish to work remotely but want to be employed by a company rather than work as independent contractors. You never pay to post a job on the site, so you won’t have to worry about competing with sponsored or featured listings. Hubstaff Talent also promotes your openings via its social media platform free of charge for even more visibility.13
Cross-Posting Is Key
When advertising job openings online, don’t constrain yourself to just one site. One of the biggest benefits of low- and no-cost hiring sites is that you’re free to post your job description in more than one place to reach different user bases. Take advantage of that by cross-posting on more than one of the above sites. As you connect with qualified candidates, take note of the sites that referred them. By tracking the number of applicants you receive from each site, you can refine your cross-posting process in the future.
