Hiring Platforms vs. Job Boards: Which One is Right for Your Business?

What Are Job Boards and Hiring Platforms? 

Both job boards and hiring platforms can help you connect with job applicants, but they serve distinct purposes—and offer distinct results. 

What Is a Job Board?

A job board—also called a job site—is like an online bulletin board. You can post job openings and wait for applicants to find them. Forty-five percent of small businesses rely on job boards to recruit and hire new employees. It serves as a marketplace for job listings, and many applicants turn to these sites to search for open positions they may be interested in applying for. 

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Job sites can be used to increase the visibility of your posting in places where job seekers are already looking instead of relying on your site’s career page alone, which often significantly increases the total number of applications you receive. Common examples include LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter. 

It’s a marketplace for job listings. It’s great for getting your job out there, but it doesn’t offer much help beyond that.

What Is a Hiring Platform? 

Hiring platforms are complete toolsets that help businesses before, during, and after making a hire. They often help you write job descriptions, post on multiple job boards, manage interviews, then help you onboard your new hire. Here’s a list of features that hiring platforms might have: 

Each hiring platform is different, but many include these features you won’t find on job boards alone:

• help writing job descriptions
• posting to multiple job sites 
• evaluation tools
• candidate texting 
• interview guides 
• applicant tracking system (ATS) 
• streamlined onboarding processes

According to Wizehire’s Small Business Survey, only 3% of small businesses use an online HR tool or platform to source, evaluate, and hire candidates. Hiring platforms make it easier for businesses to find top talent, nurture candidates, and hire and onboard them efficiently. This saves countless hours and helps your team make better hiring decisions. 

The Differences Between Job Boards and Hiring Platforms

Job boards and hiring platforms serve two completely separate purposes. 

Hiring managers use job boards to post a job opening and get applications. They require hiring managers to manually review applications, manage communication, and handle candidate screening, often resulting in a large volume of unqualified applicants. They may have the ability to pay to promote the posting for peak visibility, but that’s the extent of what job boards can offer.

Hiring platforms, like Wizehire, provide an end-to-end solution that goes beyond posting jobs. They include features like applicant tracking systems (ATS), candidate screening tools, integrated communication, and sometimes even support with crafting job descriptions and interview guidance. These platforms streamline the hiring process, reducing the workload for hiring managers.

In short, job boards offer a more manual approach to posting jobs, while hiring platforms deliver a full-service solution that helps with everything from posting to hiring and onboarding.

Pros and Cons of Hiring Platforms 

Hiring platforms offer more comprehensive tools for businesses but come with a learning curve and cost, while job boards provide a simpler option for posting jobs.

When to Use Job Boards and Hiring Platforms 

When filling open positions, advertising your postings across multiple job sites is a solid strategy. It’s not uncommon for candidates to use only LinkedIn or Indeed or ZipRecruiter, and ensuring your job posting is featured on each site can help you find the best candidates. 

Hiring platforms are key here. 

A significant 30% of employers find it time-consuming to identify qualified job applicants. Platforms like Wizehire allow you to push a job post to multiple job boards with just a few clicks, saving hours compared to manually submitting posts to every individual job board. It will also collect applications in a single database, making it easier for you to review, interview, and onboard people quickly. 

The advanced features of hiring platforms—particularly applicant tracking systems and interview guides—are crucial in singling out top talent amid hundreds or thousands of applications. 

With a hiring platform, you can discover candidates with the right skills, personality, and cultural fit for your role, while evaluating them fairly to find the best match. This approach helps you improve key hiring metrics, lowering your time-to-hire and cutting recruiting and hiring costs. 

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Signs It’s Time to Use a Hiring Platform 

When your team is filling an open position, building a candidate pipeline, or even opening a new location, you’ll likely benefit from upgrading to a hiring platform. There are a few signs, however, that it’s definitely time to do it:

• You’re struggling to get enough reach or qualified applicants interested with individual job postings. 
• There are too many incoming applications to keep track of and your hiring managers are overwhelmed sorting through them.
• Your team is unsure of how to identify top talent early on in the screening and interviewing stages. 
• You’re considering multiple applicants and want to evaluate them fairly through the interview process.
• You need help streamlining onboarding and hiring processes. 

With a hiring platform, you can more easily find the right person for each open position and, over time, increase your retention rates while reducing employee turnover and cost per hire.

Wize Words

While job sites are useful, they aren’t a substitute for hiring platforms. In addition to expanding your reach across 100+ job boards effortlessly, hiring platforms like Wizehire help you find the best candidates out of a pile of applications.

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Ana Gotter

Ana is a strategic content marketer with over 10 years of writing experience, including extensive ghostwriting for HR and recruiting agencies. She firmly believes in the transformative power of storytelling, strategy, and research to create outstanding content.