The Top UK Job Boards and Hiring Platforms To Find Talent in 2024

The UK job market is evolving rapidly, and sourcing high-quality talent is as challenging and crucial as ever. Hiring companies are shifting to a more competitive landscape that requires them to find the best-performing talent while keeping the costs down at the same time. 

Fortunately, the online world provides many powerful tools to expand your reach as an internal recruiter, allowing you to find the right people for the job. Many companies now rely on job boards and hiring software to save time and money, optimise workflow, and track applicants through the hiring journey.

It makes sense to access the best recruitment platforms and tools to find and recruit great talent. But with all the options around, where do you start?

This article breaks down the top eight job boards in the UK as well as valuable social media platforms and tools to share and distribute jobs.

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The Top 10 Job Boards to Post Jobs in the United Kingdom

With the shift to contactless remote work, job boards are becoming increasingly valuable for employers, HR managers, and internal recruiters in the UK. 

Although features may vary depending on the platform, the most common ones are job and candidate searching, job advertising, and the ability to sort and track applicants in the recruiting process.

This list aims to provide an up-to-date look at the best UK-based job boards in 2022 and explain what each platform can do for hiring companies.

1. Indeed UK

Indeed is the most widely-used job board website globally. Luckily for UK recruiters, it has an optimised version that caters specifically to the UK job market called Indeed UK.

This feature boasts its comprehensive search feature that allows recruiters to sort talent using details such as education, experience, and job title. They can also sort through uploaded CVs using the same parameters.

Companies can set up in-depth profiles on the platform to attract the right talent and pay to promote their job adverts, boost visibility, and speed up hiring. Indeed offers mobile-focused applications as well to capitalise on the job-seekers’ broader use of mobile.

Employers can review applications, schedule interviews, and view recommended candidates straight from the platform’s dashboard. Indeed’s skill-testing solution also allows employers to find the most qualified applicants through skills assessments and compare candidate results.

Standout feature: Indeed IQ automatically adjusts ad budget spend levels and bidding across jobs in real-time to bring in the right volume of candidates while saving resources - at no extra charge.

2. TotalJobs

With a database of 21 million CV’s, TotalJobs is one of the largest and fastest-growing recruitment platforms in the UK. 

Recruiters can choose to hire for one or multiple roles and use paid features to advertise by location, increase the relevancy of applicants, and boost the total number of applications received using email marketing.

TotalJobs offers features such as automated email communication with shortlisted applicants and automated screening and sorting of candidates. It can also integrate an applicant tracking system directly with its platform to optimise and manage the hiring process.

Standout feature: Their Keyshot feature allows employers to email “hard-to-fill” jobs to 500 relevant people, set up and sent by a team of experts.

3. CV-Library

CV-Library is a robust platform that makes it easy for companies to showcase their job vacancies and source the perfect candidates from a database of 16 million CVs.

It’s the leading independent UK job board in 2022, boasting a wide range of features such as screening questions, video interviews, social media job posting, monthly usage reports, and integration with multiple applicant tracking systems.

CV-Library’s partner network feature offers free ad coverage on 800+ job boards and career sites, such as Adzuna, Trovit, and ZipRecruiter. Recruiters also gain access to a dedicated account manager to help with the campaign by offering suggestions to increase response rates.

Standout feature: CV-Library’s Watchdog feature sends relevant candidate alerts to employers’ inbox when they register and set up their account details, allowing companies to stay ahead of the competition.

4. Glassdoor

An innovative recruitment platform, Glassdoor helps companies hire the best talent by providing an in-depth branding experience.

The goal is to influence the highest quality of candidates with engaging and authentic brand storytelling and provide free reviews and ratings that show employers as the desirable choice above the rest.

Glassdoor offers companies in-depth insights into competitor rankings. It analyses how job seekers are engaging with your brand by using profile traffic and demographics of profile visitors.

Standout feature: Glassdoor centres the talent sourcing process on the importance of company branding. Employers can request and respond to employee reviews which can then be featured on the company profile to attract potential candidates.

5. Monster

Monster is a UK-based hiring platform that allows employers to create compelling, personalised campaigns using features like intelligent messaging and follow-up tools.

Its candidate dashboard helps in organising campaigns that let hiring companies stay connected and communicate seamlessly with candidates. Versatile search filters can also be used to source and match with ideal talent.

In addition to this, Monster is specially optimised for the Google job search experience, giving employers more visibility on Google Search. Its flexible subscription plan also allows employers to pause and cancel job adverts as needed.

Standout feature: Monster offers bespoke solutions for the recruiting needs of different client segments, such as SME’s, enterprise organisations, staffing agencies and government entities, serving each according to its main recruiting pain points.

6. Reed

By using Reed, recruiters can target job adverts to qualified candidates who possess the qualities and skills they need, thanks to over 7,200 CVs posted to the site every day.

Reed gives employers an edge with its clear, comprehensive job details pages, detailed screening filters, and custom-branded company profiles that help attract and convert the best applicants.

There’s also a feature that rates and sorts candidates within the company’s management dashboard to allow for easy shortlisting and communication. With premium add-ons, employers can keep ads in rotation at the top of the search results and have the job emailed to the top 250 matching candidates.

Standout feature: Reed offers a simple but powerful tool to search how many registered candidates are in your sector and location in the UK. For example, as of this writing, there are 59,751 registered candidates in the Accountancy sector in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.

7. CWJobs

The past year has made the importance of technology-based jobs very clear, and CWJobs positions itself as the top job board for sourcing talent in the tech space. 

CWJobs offers employers the option to buy into its database of 1.2 million CVs, post jobs adverts, or both. Hiring companies can target relevant, experienced tech talent using premium images and video, custom-branded emails, and social media campaigns.

UK employers can also advertise the same job post across multiple locations to maximise its reach and fill nationwide or regional vacancies fast.

Standout feature: The team at CWJobs can design a high-performing, premium job ad for companies who share their images and video with the platform. This helps increase the ad’s response rate and make a more influential first impression on top talents.

8. Adzuna

Adzuna is a unique job board based in South West London. It focuses on giving jobseekers a high-quality, educational, and informative experience, with the goal of making them better candidates for hiring employers.

Companies can try out the platform and post jobs for free. Once paid advertising begins, Adzuna uses data transparency to achieve higher returns on campaigns and waste less time and money at the same time.

Adzuna has a carefully selected network of 100+ national, local, niche, and exclusive partners, including LinkedIn and Jobstoday, to make sure that jobs reach the best possible audience.

Standout features: According to Adzuna, it has access to more jobs than any other site, giving you an edge over the competition. It also claims to have access to tools like job market data and insights used by the UK government.

9. Talent

Talent.com has established itself as one of the largest job search and recruitment platforms worldwide, receiving over 28 million unique monthly visitors globally.

Talent offer companies to provide a free feed and additional PPC options, they currently operate in 78 countries, demonstrating 28M unique visitors and 50M job alerts sent out per day.

Standout features: They offer free organic feeds and PPC, they are currently rolling out an integrated API that will allow candidates to easily apply into your ATS/Recruitment system for streamlined candidate onboarding.

10.  Jobsora

 Jobsora is an international site that offers jobs in different countries. There is also the version for the UK and other English-speaking countries. The website offers new jobs from other reviewed platforms to provide the widest possible set of results. 

Jobsora offer companies to provide a free feed and additional PPC options, they currently operate in 49 countries, demonstrating 10M unique visitors and 250,000 daily applicants worldwide through their partnerships.

One of the key benefits of the platform is the simplicity of service functionality. The project contains only the necessary information. There are filters, a user-friendly interface, and suitability for both a computer and a mobile device or tablet. 
 

Standout features: There are separate pages for finding jobs that are categorized by the city. This means that the settings of the website allow candidates to search for their place of residence. Thanks to a number of filters in the left sidebar, they can select salary, type of employment, work experience, place of work, type of organization, special provisions, social requirements, region, occupation, and company.

Social Media and Alternative Platforms to Source Talent

Finding the best job boards to use is a crucial part of sourcing top talent. Social media, in particular, plays an integral role in connecting companies with their future employees. 

LinkedIn

Platforms like LinkedIn have been designed for this exact purpose. They have versatile features built specifically to improve the recruiting process, such as:

• Extensive job posting to over 26 million users in the UK
• Advanced search filters and smart recommendations to refine your search
• Personalised InMail or bulk messages to reach multiple candidates at once
• Recruiter Projects to organise your campaign, view candidate profiles, and allow sharing and communicating with your recruiting team
• Skill assessments to filter candidates before contacting them
• Integration with a company’s applicant tracking system
• Candidate notifications and mobile app access

LinkedIn has set itself apart as the go-to place for high-level professionals to showcase the best of their work. It’s ideal for companies looking to gain deeper insights into their candidates and maximise their recruitment campaigns.

Twitter and Facebook

Although LinkedIn is seen as a more professional platform, Twitter and Facebook can also help employers connect with the right talent when used correctly.

UK companies widely use these two social media platforms to expand their brand and give potential candidates a more human and personalised view of their companies.

Both platforms are excellent places for posting job adverts, but the key is to build up an engaged and industry-relevant audience first. Having more viewers helps companies to get the word out there – allowing them to reach the best candidate for the job.

Upwork, Fiverr, and Other Platforms

There are more niche platforms out there that deserve to be mentioned, such as:

• Upwork and Fiverr for freelancers in a wide range of sectors
• Behance and DeviantArt for graphic designers
• GitHub and Stack Overflow for developers, engineers and tech-based talent
• Instagram for creative talent and reaching a younger demographic

Finding the right platforms depends on who a company is trying to recruit and what features each platform offers that employers can use in their favour. 

Having a deeper insight into the desired candidate pool is essential for finding the right talent, so it’s not a surprise that employers are now going beyond job boards and turning to social media platforms to source new talent.

Using the Best Job Boards and Hiring Platforms to Post Jobs in the UK

Finding top talent in the UK is a complex and challenging process that requires a significant amount of strategy and research. This makes it highly important to look into the best job boards, platforms, and software before running and expanding recruitment campaigns.

By leveraging the resources shared in this article, employers can make more informed decisions on where to begin recruiting and which platforms are the best for getting the job done.

Did you know that SeeMeHired allows you to post through multiple job boards at once? Talk to a product expert and see how you can manage listings through Indeed, Monster, and more in one place.