There are hundreds of job posting sites available to job seekers and talent sourcing professionals. Yet, less than 10% of landed jobs are the result of solely responding to a published opening. Job boards can be quite distracting and tend to consume one’s search time. However, an integrated approach coupling job postings with networking can be very effective. Optimize the use of job postings in your search by setting job alerts on targeted job boards. Job alerts send you an email notification when relevant openings are posted.

Most companies post openings on their own company websites, pulling candidates directly into their applicant tracking systems. Alumni groups (like Darden Alumni Career Services) maintain boards to facilitate targeted access to their alumni. Third party websites are targeted to specific sectors, industries, functions or geographies -- attracting a distinct, more highly qualified talent pool which is appealing to recruiters. The mega-sites (monster.com, careerbuilder.com, etc.) contain a broad range of jobs which produce enormous pools of applicants making it cumbersome for recruiters to uncover relevant candidates. These mega-sites tend to be a waste of time for Darden alumni. Some job sites “crawl” the web and extract postings from the other sites. These crawlers do the surfing for the job seeker. LinkedIn is also a source of job posting-- check Career tab on Company Pages and Job tab on Group pages for targeted job postings.

If you do an internet search for “Executive Job Posting sites” you’ll get a plethora of suggestions for top job boards. The job boards we have found most useful to Darden alumni are listed below. Again, we can’t reiterate enough how important it is to use postings as one tool in an integrated job search which incorporates leads with personal connections. Ideally, you want to be introduced to an opening BEFORE it is ever posted!

Crawlers:

·         CareerShift.com

·         Indeed.com

Industry specific sites:

·         Academia: The Chronicle of Higher Education AACSB Higher Ed Jobs

·         Banking: American Bankers Association BankJobs.com

·         Energy: EnergyCentralJobs.com CleanTechRecruits.com

·         Finance: eFinancialCareers FINS Wall Street Journal Careers

·         Government: USAJobs.com FederalJobs.net

·         Marketing: American Marketing Association MarketingJobs.com

·         Non-profit: The Chronicle of Philanthropy Idealist.org Non Profit Job Seeker

·         Private Equity/VC/Hedge Funds: GloCap Job Search Digest

·         Sustainability: Green Dream Jobs Business Social Responsibility Net Impact