Welcome to our series on making recruiting easy. We try to answer the most common questions from HR and internal recruiters, so the series covers recruitment process, technology and regulation. Up next: free job posting sites for employers.

We start with some good news; there is a selection of free job posting sites for employers. The question is whether free job advertising works and which options are best. In this blog, we compare them to find out.

Comparing Free Job boards

Free job postings are an attractive addition to paid advertising, so long as jobseekers can find your jobs and apply for them. To compare free job advertising options fairly, we used the same criteria for each:

Criteria	Measured As
Job types	Support for job types such as permanent, contract, etc.
Hours	Support for Full-Time and Part-Time
Popularity	Total number of jobs advertised
Discovery	Appearance in job search results
Ease of use	Posting and application process
Unique features	Any that have merit

Ease of Free Job Board Discovery

There is little point in advertising your job if jobseekers can’t find them. Most start with an in internet search, so to test ease of discovery we used the same search terms on two popular search engines; Google and Bing. We checked the results to identify whether each free job board appeared within the first few pages. Our chosen search terms were as follows:

• “Jobs”
• “Recruiter jobs in London”
• “HR Jobs”
• “Care jobs”

During our tests, some job boards appeared only intermittently within the first page of results. In these cases the job board was paying for visibility and clicks. To avoid confusion we measured only natural search results and eliminated all paid results from our tests.

GOV Find a Job

Universal JobMatch was updated in 2018 to become GOV Find a Job. It is one of the most widely used free job posting sites and it is used by employers and agents alike. GOV Find a Job is owned by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

A great feature of Find a Job is that every employer is approved by the DWP before their jobs can be made available in search results. That’s good news for an industry that suffers from a good deal of spam advertising.

GOV Find a Job is easy to use, well governed and allows employers to redirect applicants to their own application forms. It also supports automatic upload from a supporting Applicant Tracking System. It doesn’t appear high on most search results, but remains popular and has a significant number of job postings.

Criteria	Result
Job Types	Permanent, Temporary, Contract, Apprenticeship
Hours	Full Time, Part Time
Vacancies	139,000 +
Bing Search	“Jobs” = page 6 “recruiter jobs in London” = After page 10 “HR Jobs” = After page 10 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Google Search	“Jobs” = Page 2 “recruiter jobs in London” = After page 10 “HR Jobs” = After page 10 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Ease of Use”	Applicants can apply easily and can be redirected to a specific employer URL. This could be a URL for an application form for instance.
Uniques”	Jobs posted by Disability Confident employers are branded with the kitemark

Indeed

Indeed has remained one of the best free job posting sites for employers since it first came to market. It supports 2 types of job listing; organic and sponsored. The organic job postings are Indeed’s free option.

It is because they are free that organic job postings decline in search results quite quickly. Sponsored adverts remain higher in search results for the period of sponsorship. However, optimising adverts is a good way to get quick wins from free job postings. Users who do can get better than expected results and most employers we speak with have successfully placed staff from free adverts on Indeed.

To some degree Indeed has been successful because it performs consistently well in search results. There must be very few jobseekers who can claim they haven’t heard of Indeed.

Criteria	Result
Job Types	Permanent, Temporary, Contract, Apprenticeship, Volunteer, Internship
Hours	Full Time, Part Time
Vacancies	419,000 +
Bing Search	“Jobs” = page 1 “recruiter jobs in London” = page 1 “HR Jobs” = page 1 “Care Jobs” = Page 1
Google Search	“Jobs” = Page 1 top “recruiter jobs in London” = Page 1 top “HR Jobs” = Page 1 top “Care Jobs” = Page 1
Ease of Use”	Applicants can apply easily and can be redirected to a specific employer URL. This could be a URL for an application form for instance. In addition, the Indeed Apply option supports application forms, completed forms being passed to a supporting Applicant Tracking System
Uniques”	Employers can sponsor adverts to prevent them declining in job search results

Google for Jobs

Google for Jobs is the newer kid on the block. We have included it in this review even though it isn’t a traditional job board. Other job boards allow employers to post and manage their adverts, but Google for Jobs is different.

Google collects jobs from lots of websites and aggregates them all in one, convenient online space for jobseekers. Each job on Google for Jobs must therefore exist elsewhere and it must conform to a set of rules. Those rules include the addition of structured data to the job and the inclusion of an application form.

The best Applicant Tracking Systems notify Google when a new job is advertised. That shortens the time it takes to place a free advert on Google for Jobs.

Google for Jobs is an increasingly important option for employers. It remains high on search results for jobseekers and it is mobile friendly. Whilst Bing users may not find Google for jobs easily, there are more Googlers than Bingers.

Criteria	Result
Job Types	Full-time, Part-time, Contract, Internship
Hours	Full Time, Part Time, expressed in Job Type
Vacancies	Unknown, but most likely a very large number
Bing Search	“Jobs” = After page 10 “recruiter jobs in London” = After page 10 “HR Jobs” = After page 10 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Google Search	“Jobs” = Page 1 “recruiter jobs in London” = Page 1 “HR Jobs” = Page 1 “Care Jobs” = Page 1
Ease of Use”	Google for Jobs does not have its own application forms or applicant account. Instead, applicants are redirected to the source URL of the job which must have an accompanying application form.
Uniques”	This is a job aggregation service rather than a job board. Adverts cannot be posted by hand.

Adzuna

Adzuna lets you post job adverts and receive applications for free. It also supports sponsored advertising. If you do sponsor your job adverts, Adzuna claims to publish them to over 100 job sites.

In our experience, Adzuna is a useful free advertising option, but applicant numbers can be low if you don’t pay to sponsor them. Adzuna, to their credit, don’t try to hide this in any way. However, a suitable Applicant Tracking System should be able to upload your vacancies automatically. In that way you can get the occasional Adzuna benefit without the effort.

One point to note with Adzuna is that it may choose to upload your vacancies to LinkedIn. Depending upon the type of vacancy, this can prove valuable in attracting more applicants.

Criteria	Result
Job Types	Full-time, Part-time, Permanent, Contract
Hours	Full Time, Part Time, expressed in Job Type
Vacancies	Unknown, but most likely a very large number
Bing Search	“Jobs” = After page 10 “recruiter jobs in London” = Page 3 “HR Jobs” = After page 10 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Google Search	“Jobs” = After page 10 “recruiter jobs in London” = Page 2 “HR Jobs” = After page 10 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Ease of Use”	Easy
Uniques”	Some jobs find their way onto LinkedIn automatically, pulling jobseekers into Adzuna.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Keep that in mind as you review the search results for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, versus Google.

The LinkedIn job posting section operates on a pay per click (PPC) basis. Post your job for free then set a budget to stay in control of overall spend. However, you can post a direct link to your job in company pages or discussion forums. Posting in this way might not achieve the visibility of a formal LinkedIn job, but it’s free.

Our measure of Bing and Google search results reflect the formal job postings on LinkedIn. Search results don’t recognise posts on discussion forums.

Criteria	Result
Job Types	Full-time, Part-time, Contract, Temporary, Volunteer, Internship
Hours	Full Time, Part Time, expressed in Job Type
Vacancies	1.75m (UK)
Bing Search	“Jobs” = page 1 “recruiter jobs in London” = page 1 “HR Jobs” = page 6 “Care Jobs” = page 1
Google Search	“Jobs” = page 2 “recruiter jobs in London” = Page 2 “HR Jobs” = page 3 “Care Jobs” = After page 10
Ease of Use”	Easy
Uniques”	LinkedIn is a professional networking tool and many of the UK workforce have a LinkedIn profile. This may be a good choice for advertising skilled roles.

Your Website

We all know that our website is our shop window. Using Google and Bing Webmaster helps us to identify who visits, how long they stay, the pages they read and so on. With most of our focus on selling our products and services, it’s easy to forget that our website is a key resource for attracting new candidates too.

We should all have a careers section on our website that’s easy to identify and access. Try to make sure that every job is current and that each one reflects just a single vacancy. The advert title “Carers required” is less trusted than “Carer” among jobseekers. Allow people to apply for your vacancies online and with any device. All of this is easily achieved with an Applicant Tracking System.

Social Media

Using Social Media is free and can be effective if you have active followers. Try to make sure that new vacancies are published with #job, #jobs, #hiring or similar. Offer a few lines about your vacancy and a link to a page with the full advert and an application form. Again, a good Applicant Tracking System should help you with this.

Conclusion

Each of the free job boards we reviewed have genuine merit. Top of the list has to be Indeed. It returns high in search results and its free job posting option delivers results.

Spreading your vacancy to all of the available options is a worthwhile strategy. However, the issue for most employers is finding the time to do that. Any posting strategy should also include Google for Jobs, but this is most easily accessed via a system because it doesn’t support posting by hand.

The optimum approach of posting everywhere is most easily achieved with a multipost solution. These allow you to write an advert once then automatically post it to a number of sites, including free job boards. After all, your next great employee could come from any of the free job sites and you don’t want to miss out.

Want to know more?

Customers agree that CVMinder ATS is the best Applicant Tracking System for saving time and recruiting fees. With multipost included, you can reach further to recruit faster and smarter than your competitors. If you want to know more about CVMinder ATS or any of the free advertising options in this article, contact us now.