The Best Free Job Search Sites

While it might not seem that way, it wasn’t all that long ago that the best way to find a new job was by reading your local newspaper’s classified ads section. Many employers didn’t advertise their job openings because of the cost to reach a very small pool of potential job seekers.

This, of course, has all changed with the Internet. There are millions of job opportunities listed across tens of thousands of job websites on the Internet. You would never have the time to check them all out (nor should you). Most (but not all) of these sites are free.  How do you determine which free sites to use?  We’ve created a shortlist of the best free job search sites based on our review of twenty or so of the most popular sites.  But remember, “most popular” does not necessarily mean “the best” and we’ve used some of our own criteria to create this list of the top ten.

Should you just use one job search site?  Probably not.  While there may be some overlap across job search sites in terms of listings, there are times that some opportunities only show on a specific site.  Signing up for two to three job search sites should be more than enough.  Every site has pros and cons, find the two or three sites that offer the best functionality for your needs.

What are Job Search Sites?

At the most basic level, job search sites are a repository of job opportunities and their functionality is similar to Internet search engines. Job search sites match a candidate’s criteria to their database and return a list of potential opportunities.  Job opportunities may be posted by employers or recruiters (almost like job ads) while other sites aggregate opportunities found in company career sites.

How do Job Search Sites Work?

As mentioned earlier, job search sites work very much like an Internet search engine.  Enter the job title, keywords, skills, location, etc. and most sites will return opportunities that meet your criteria.  Most sites are free, but there are some that charge a fee for full access to their list of opportunities.  Paying for access does not always mean that the opportunities are not listed elsewhere (for free).  We’ve focused on those sites that offer free access to job search opportunities for job seekers.

The Best Free Job Search Sites

In no particular order, the following is our list of the top ten free job sites for your review.

• Lensa – Lensa connects employers, staffing organizations, RPOs, and recruitment Ad agencies with active, qualified, and interested job seekers. With over 18 million registered members, Lensa is one of the largest recruitment and employment platforms in the US. Their objective is to provide job seekers with information on salary, employment, diversity, career prospects, and more necessary information in order to help them discover their ideal workplace. Lensa’s job search engine uses matching learning and AI to provide the best possibilities for job searches based on real-time data.
• CareerBuilder – Also free to job seekers, you can filter by job type, date posted, pay, distance as well as work from home/remote. As with ZipRecruiter, you can have saved searches as well as track your applications. As with many of the sites listed in this article, CareerBuilder has the ability to create job alerts and you can review salaries as well as apply for most jobs directly from your search results.
• Monster.com – Monster is one of the oldest online cover letters, saved searches, etc.) to help in your search.
• ZipRecruiter – ZipRecruiter is one of the best-known job boards and has one of the largest databases of job opportunities.  The site is free for job seekers and you can search for jobs based on job title, keyword, or location.  The site keeps track of applied jobs (an important feature) and allows you to save jobs that you might want to review at a later time.

• Google for Jobs – Google for Jobs is a job search feature powered by Google’s search technology. Job seekers search for open positions and Google aggregates the results of that search from a variety of job boards (some of the sites listed in this article), Company career sites, and many more. Google leverages job seekers’ location to help find jobs that are close to where a job seeker lives.  Get started by entering the role you would like to find (such as “retail jobs”).

• Glassdoor.com – Glassdoor is known for its employer/company reviews (over 70 million company reviews). If you want to find out if a company is a good fit for you, this platform is a great place to start. Glassdoor has company reviews, ratings, and salary content and is a good resource for building your list of the companies where you might want to work.
• Indeed.com – Indeed.com has been around for a long time and helped create the popularity of  “job aggregator” sites. Indeed and Glassdoor are sister companies. Indeed is free for job seekers and makes it easy to search and apply to many job opportunities very quickly. 
• LinkedIn – While LinkedIn is primarily known as a professional networking site, LinkedIn is also a very good resource for free job search.  Job opportunities are typically on the target company’s website which can sometimes be time-consuming to complete the job application process. 
• Dice.com – Dice.com is best known for tech-related job opportunities. While it focuses almost exclusively on tech careers and advice, you can also leverage the platform for other types of job functions. Most opportunities provide an “apply now” button (as do many of the other sites reviewed here) as well as the ability to create an alert.

Summary

All of the sites listed above have robust job search features, although we did find that overall, using ZipRecruiter and Monster.com offer the most functionality.  All have very good filters when searching for opportunities, and most have the ability to apply directly to the opportunity from the search. You can certainly try a few to see which works best for you.

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04/28/2024 10:31 pm GMT