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Looking for the Best Startup Job Board To Grow Your Team? Check Out Our 7 Top Picks
When you first begin scaling your startup, it’s essential to get acquainted with the best job boards that will help you reliably source the most qualified candidates without burning a hole in your budget. Expediency is vital as using 20+ hiring platforms simultaneously will quickly drain your finances.
This article will cover the pros and cons of the top 7 startup job boards—many of which are either free-to-use job boards or affordable enough to help you get through the hiring cycle with minimum expenses.
You’ll also learn how to speed up time-to-hire and cut hiring costs IN HALF by setting up an automated hiring funnel with Workello.
| Job Board | Price Point |
|---|---|
| Startupers | Free |
| Free (sponsored post from $5+ per day) | |
| SimplyHired | Free (contacting a candidate costs $9+) |
| Ladders | Free (for up to 10 ads a month) |
| AngelList Talent | Free |
| Jobspresso | $299 per job listing lasting for 3 months |
| WeWorkRemotely | $299/month |
#1 Startupers
Startupers is an entirely free startup job board designed primarily to help new, up-and-coming companies scale their teams.
It’s a great website to source candidates for full-time employment, part-time work, or a one-off freelance gig, making it one of the best job boards for startups.
Using the job board requires minimal effort—you don’t even have to register! Startupers also helps employers and jobseekers resolve any technical issues with excellent customer support service.
On the downside, the site lacks many vital features—especially for keeping in touch with candidates. To post a job, you must have an ATS and specify which one, or you won’t be able to use the site. There are also no company branding options, and job ads have a somewhat limited reach.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Excellent customer support service Platform does not require employers to register Navigable, easy-to-use interface Completely free to use | No branding options or site analytics Lack of an efficient messaging system You must have an ATS to post a job |
#2 LinkedIn
With almost a billion users around the globe, LinkedIn is one of the most popular free job boards online, and more than that—it gives you access to an entire social network to source top talent from! This makes it one of the best remote job boards for networking with talented professionals around the world. Being a social media for professionals first and foremost, LinkedIn has also proven useful for tapping into the so-called passive talent pool, i.e., reaching qualified professionals that are not actively looking for a new job.
While posting a vacancy on LinkedIn is free, it won’t have much visibility as it will appear on jobseekers’ feeds only for a short time before it gets pushed out by new ads posted by other companies. Another downside of LinkedIn free job posts is that you can only have one live ad at a time, and it will be shut down automatically after 30 days.
While LinkedIn does offer premium packages with features designed specifically for recruiters, the cheapest plan with the least number of functionalities costs $170 a month. Even this lowest price tends to be too steep for startups and companies with limited hiring budgets. That’s why they usually promote individual job posts to reach suitable candidates. Promoting a single vacancy starts at $5 and comes with features such as applicant management, increased visibility in search results, and email alerts.
LinkedIn prominently lacks a resume search feature, regardless of whether you purchase some of the premium packages or promote a post, which is arguably its weakest point as a job board.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Massive reach and ability to attract passive talent The option of free job posting Sponsoring an ad costs as little as $5 and has many useful hiring features | Free ads have limited visibility and expire after 30 days No resume search feature Premium recruiting plans are often too costly for startups |
#3 SimplyHired
With over 30 million monthly visitors, SimplyHired is one of the most popular free job boards today. As such, it is ideally suited for startups and growth-stage enterprises with limited resources looking to expand their teams with qualified talent. The platform is also synced with other websites—including the hiring giant Indeed—which means your job ads are automatically shared across their partner network.
SimplyHired also provides employers with a comprehensive job description library and the ability to track and sort candidates and schedule interviews.
While posting job listings is free, remember that SimplyHired will charge you at least $9 for each candidate you wish to contact for potential testing or an interview.
Arguably the biggest downside of SimplyHired is that it’s plagued by too many outdated candidate profiles. Despite the many apparent benefits of its affiliation with Indeed, you can expect your hiring funnel to be swamped with applications soon after posting. Since the platform charges you for every applicant you decide to contact, be prepared to allocate significant time for reviewing CVs and cover letters if you want to make the best out of using SimplyHired.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Ad posts are synched with partner websites Ability to schedule interviews with promising applicants Navigable user interface Recruitment playbooks available on the website | Pay-per-contact pricing model Lack of an automated messaging system Outdated profiles and obsolete candidate information |
#4 Ladders
With around 14 million registered users, Ladders is the best job board to find candidates for executive positions at startup companies. As a startup executives job board, most available candidates are highly educated, often with Master’s degrees.
The platform provides a free Basic plan that allows for up to 10 job listings per month. This package also gives you unlimited access to the platform’s resume database. Ladders will send you alerts notifying you of candidates who meet the criteria outlined in your job description. You can also schedule interviews and conduct pre-screening via the website.
On the other hand, if you opt for Ladders’ free Basic Plan to find a C-level manager for your startup, you will be missing out on many additional features included in its more advanced paid packages, such as candidate contact information and ATS integration. The price of these premium packages starts at $299 per month for the Lite Access plan, which itself lacks ATS integration and is limited to 50 resume views. The most advanced plan, Full Access, has an array of elaborate features but costs $599 a month, which is often financially unviable for up-and-coming companies.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Superb job board for sourcing well-educated candidates from a variety of fields Alerts for candidates whose competencies meet the job specifications Option to schedule interviews with candidates via their website | Premium features are pricey Limited number of hiring functionalities with the free basic account |
#5 AngelList Talent
There are over 2 million active jobseekers on AngelList Talent, making it an excellent tech startups job board to recruit candidates with a background in technology and tech development.
AngelList Talent is a cloud-based hiring solution that allows you to search for candidates by location and job type. It has a robust messaging system and allows you to review candidate resumes before contacting a candidate. The website also includes a candidate activity dashboard and email notifications on your candidate’s progress through the hiring funnel.
As the website is geared primarily toward helping startups, their basic price plan is free of charge. The main issue with AngelList’s free basic plan is that it allows a limited number of candidate views unless you pay $249 monthly for the premium package. The latter offers many features unavailable to basic plan users, such as promoted posts and unlimited candidate profile views. Even the premium package prominently lacks a candidate-matching option, and there were many user complaints about the website’s user-friendliness and unresponsive customer support.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free basic plan Excellent messaging system Ability to review resumes before reaching out Email notifications | Free basic plan has limited hiring functionalities Unintuitive user interface and Caters mainly to tech startups No candidate-matching option |
#6 Jobspresso
With around 100,000 active jobseekers, Jobspresso has a smaller user base compared to other boards reviewed in this article. It makes up for it by automatically linking all job ads to Twitter, allowing you to reach a wider pool of jobseekers.
Though the job board has a primarily U.S.-based audience, the site also caters to an international candidate base—allowing you to find a skilled professional at any price point.
Still, Jobspresso allows for few ATS integrations and has poor candidate filtering functionalities.
Jobspresso’s basic plan costs $299, allows one job listing live for 3 months, and includes features such as access to a candidate database and job alert emails. The job board also has a 30-day refund guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with the services.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Global talent pool Money-back guarantee within 30-days Job ad updates are linked to Twitter | Poor filtering functionality Job ads can’t target a specific audience |
#7 We Work Remotely
With its over 2.5 million monthly visitors, We Work Remotely is one of the best websites for hiring remote workers, and that is precisely why it is such a popular job board for early-stage startups.
The platform offers employers the option to search for highly skilled candidates specializing in various areas, such as SEO, social media, content marketing, email outreach, software development, tech, science, and other fields.
We Work Remotely also possesses an extensive library of job description templates for various roles and allows you to customize your company profile with your logo and brand colors.
The most significant drawbacks of this hiring platform are the lack of a resume database and the limitation to two job ads you can share via social media—and that’s after you’ve upgraded your company profile.
The basic pricing plan for We Work Remotely starts at $299 a month, with additional options for advanced hiring features ranging from $59–$149.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Large base of highly qualified candidates Easily navigable user interface Job template library Solid search engine | Lack of resume database Limited social media distribution |
Why Startups Are Having Such a Hard Time Attracting Top Performers
Working at a startup comes with many benefits, and many talented and qualified professionals enjoy seeing how their hard work directly impacts the growth of a smaller company. Still, don’t expect to find them in abundance at some of the biggest job boards, such as Indeed or Monster, where major companies snatch top performers as soon as they see them. So opting for a job board catering to startups specifically is the first step toward hiring suitable candidates.
The issue with these job boards is that you’ll soon find out that most of your applicants are either inexperienced or underqualified for the role.
The only way to increase your odds of finding the perfect match for your startup is by evaluating and testing as many candidates as possible. Doing so manually is a long and tedious process, and it can often feel like you’re stuck in a never-ending hiring cycle. What’s even more critical, employing an inadequate employee can be a thing that breaks a startup in its early stages, even if it’s founded on the best business idea ever.
The most experienced hiring experts rely on pre-hire assessments to make the best decisions.
Gaetano (Head of Growth @ Nextiva)
How Workello Can Help You Quicken Your Search for the Perfect Candidate While Cutting Down on Unnecessary Expenses
To help startup companies solve their hiring challenges, we’ve developed Workello—a robust, fully automated recruitment system that lets you find, evaluate, test, and hire the top 1% of candidates faster while cutting hiring costs IN HALF!
With Workello, you’ll be able to:
- Post on any job board you like and see all candidate applications in a single, unified Workello dashboard
- Sort candidates by their application status and move them through your hiring funnel with a single click
- Conduct the entire hiring process from the dashboard, from reviewing applications and testing candidates to scheduling interviews and extending job offers
- Automate candidate correspondence and save a ton of valuable time
- Find the most qualified candidates 10x faster and ensure they’re the perfect fit for your startup
Everything’s pre-configured, so you can set up your automated hiring funnel in 3 minutes and start accepting candidates right away.
Start your Workello free trial today and discover a faster, easier, more cost-effective way to hire!
