Job board review 2022
Going out and reading job postings can be very useful in your job hunt, even if you don’t apply anywhere. It can help you understand market demands better, ideally get a feel for salaries and give you hints about what’s missing from your CV.
I want to make your life a little easier by helping you pick the right sites to spend time researching.
There are two main groups here, job boards which require you to apply with a CV, and resume platforms which for the most part take your work experience and your job requirements and try to match you with the right company.
Job boards
Even though almost all job boards allow you to upload a CV and let recruiters reach out to you, I find that most people don’t want to invite that volume of messaging. Job boards make money the same way ads platforms do. You pay to have your ad displayed. Duration and placement affects price.
Jobs.cz
They have been around for a long time and are still a staple on the Czech job market. If you upload your CV here, you’ll have recruiters calling and emailing within minutes.
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salary filter
remote / home office filter
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search - as this isn’t a tech specific job board, they have a full text search instead of relying on tags. Unfortunately that comes with limitations forcing you to search for multiple job titles
salary ranges not visible
monster
Maybe the oldest global job board that’s still around and kicking. In many ways the big brother of jobs.cz, which has its pros and cons.
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remote filter
very big pool of ads from many countries
some salary info available
solid search, although it will return some false positives
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the new UI can be tedious if you don’t want to sign up
very limited filtering - probably the only way to sift through relevant jobs is to go one job title + country at a time
lots of recruiting agencies advertising here which creates noise among ads from companies
no salary filter
LinkedIn
When you really think about it, LinkedIn is essentially monster with forced signup, a feed and a messenger.
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very big pool of ads from all over the world
can get a little career inspiration from other profiles
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almost no filters
no salary info
applying often has to be done via terrible career sites forcing you to reenter your profile data
no filter on recruiters or sales contacting you
job recommendations mostly useless
weird / creepy "whose viewed my profile" feature
startupjobs
Just a few years ago, this was the place to be. These days, it’s just another job board, a little more targeted as it’s mostly tech companies and agencies recruiting here.
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salary ranges provided (although sometimes uselessly broad)
most dev roles advertised as remote
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too local - you won’t find anything above standard Czech rates being advertised here
remote working conditions vary a lot and lean more towards home office as a benefit than fully remote models
RemoteOK
This one, as the name implies, is targeted at remote workers. Most of the companies are startups of all sizes.
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remote targeted and region / timezone usually specified
salary ranges specified (BUT some of these are estimations made by the platform)
good filters
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a lot of companies that hire remote only within their own country
beware of scams
climatebase
Sometimes we forget, but we can actually choose to work on things we find meaningful, which these days, for many of us, is fighting climate change. This platform is targeted specifically at helping you find a job within companies fighting climate change from various angles.
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basically a boutique of companies to pick from
solid role grouping enabling good filtering
at least some salary ranges are provided
very cool to filter companies based on approach to fighting climate change
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few remote jobs available in Europe
even fewer jobs available without working US time zones
recommended jobs in weekly emails not targeted to remote + region unfortunately
Resume platforms
Although many job boards have some similar functionality, these platforms aim to create a smoother, more personal experience. You create your profile, add your preferences and either you send a DM to companies or they DM you.
These platforms usually make a commission when you are hired through them, the same way a recruiter would, just at lower rates.
honeypot
They are pretty well known on the German market, but are slow the grow across the EU unfortunately.
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nice signup flow
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not available in Czech Republic, even though they advertise remote positions
useless unless you want to relocate
techloop
I know techloop from the Czech market, but it was actually quite big across Europe at one point. Since they were acquired I saw the quality of job posts and rates advertised go down.
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hidden gems - early stage startups recruiting here, too
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many low quality ads
companies contacting you who don't meet e.g. your salary requirements
cord
I think I was invited here by a recruiter once and since then I occasionally check in. They also started publishing content related to career development in tech.
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good quality job postings
salary ranges everywhere
good filters
rare finds - you can find some early stage startups here
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response rates vary, no guarantees
many jobs remote only within the country (US, UK especially)
practically no change in the list of companies hiring so little incentive to check back in
Summary
Not all job boards are created equal. There is a lot of variance in the types of job ads you will find on each and the type of data they contain. In general, ease of use suffers a lot if the site is not tech industry specific and therefore can’t provide a useful grouping, which of course doesn't mean, that those sites would be a waste of time.
You can’t constantly keep track of every platform, but you can pick two and make a point to review the listings on a regular basis for specific roles and locations.
As I’ve described in this post about finding remote jobs, this hunt requires patience, even more so if you don’t want your working hours restricted e.g. to US hours.