The Best Recruiting Boards for Your Recruiting Dollars

The RPOA, in partnership with Software Advice and the National Human Resources Association, conducted a survey with 150 recruiters to determine the best job boards. We conducted this survey to figure out which job boards provide the best value for recruiters in terms of quality, quantity and price. Our best job boards survey asked asked recruiters specifically about six job boards: Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Monster, Craigslist, Indeed and Careerbuilder. Although all the recruiters didn't use all six of the job boards, all of them were used by some percentage of those surveyed. Here are the results of our survey:

LinkedIn delivers the highest quality of applicants at an affordable price range.

A whopping 40 percent of those surveyed said that LinkedIn delivered a high quality of applicants. CareerBuilder was a distant second, as only 16 percent of those surveyed said the site delivered a high quality of applicants. It's important to note that LinkedIn was the only job board of the six investigated in our survey that delivered "high-quality" applicants more than 20 percent of the time. Most of the time, the recruiters said that the job board delivered candidates of an "average quality."

We'd also like to note that our survey didn't specify or ask why LinkedIn delivers the highest quality of applicants in comparison to the other sources that were surveyed. If we were to guess, then we would think that the quality comes from the possibility that many LinkedIn hires are also referral hires. Research has shown time and time again that referrals are often high quality hires, although referral sources aren't a primary or common source of applicants.

Indeed delivers the highest quantity of applicants at an affordable price range.

LinkedIn was a close second in quantity, but Indeed.com took this category by just three percentage points. Thirty percent of recruiters said Indeed delivered a "high quantity" of candidates, compared to 27 percent of recruiters who said the same for LinkedIn. Glassdoor came in last, with only 8 percent of recruiters saying the job board delivered the highest quantity of applicants. However, Glassdoor came in last in all three categories and was used by the fewest recruiters in our survey.

Monster and Careerbuilder were a close third and fourth, with 24 and 23 percent of recruiters respectively saying that the job board delivered a "high quantity" of candidates.

Craigslist is the least expensive, but delivers lower quantity and quality of candidates than other job boards.

Recruiters were nearly unanimous on the low cost of Craiglist. Although only 42 percent of recruiters said Craiglists was of "low-cost", an equal percentage of recruiters don't even use Craiglist, while fewer than 10 percent said the job board was of "high-cost" or "medium-cost."

According to our survey, recruiters were torn about LinkedIn's overall cost. There was nearly an even split among the number of recruiters who said the social media site was of "high-cost," "medium-cost," or "low-cost." It's likely that this is due to the variety of plans LinkedIn offers organizations, which can go as high as $899 per month. Monster and Careerbuilder were considered to be of "high-cost" by the highest percentage of recruiters.

Although organizations ought to consider the resources they are allocating to each of these candidate sources, it's also important to note that organizations shouldn't exclusively source from these three sources. We point this out because this survey did not address the quality of hire for each of these sources, but that is a topic that we do address in some of our leadership forums. Here is the full survey and survey results from Software Advice, if interested.