Top 100 job board niches

by eric shannon on June 18, 2008

in job boards,lists

top niche job boardsHere is the 2011 guide to the top 100 US job board niches.  Keep reading if you are looking for the ’08 guide — for each employment niche it lists the top 3 or 4 niche job boards. This report excludes:

  • job boards that lack top Google rankings
  • boards with with high Google rankings but very low credibility or authenticity.
  • sites that require job seekers to pay or register
  • job search engines that aggregate other job board postings


In a few special cases, it includes high traffic boards that lack a top Google rank. If you want to look at the same jobs or the same jobseekers that everyone else is looking at, this list is not for you.

But, if you are looking for a unique job opportunity or job seeker, this is for you. This report relies on my 11 years of experience running a top niche job board and nearly a hundred hours of research. If you are deeply interested in the job board industry, you may also like to read my editorial observations.

If you skip this, here is the executive summary – there’s a flood of search engine spam out there. So avoid posting your job or resume the first place you come to. Remember the old saying “measure twice, cut once”. To get it right on the first try, look for websites with personality, that win meaningful awards, that are in the news, that publish a blog – whose credibility is clearly high. If you are job searching, you may also find our CareerAdviceBlogs.com helpful.

First, the top 30 job board niches. These rankings represent an average of 12 months search data at Google and are influenced by seasonal considerations as well as the recession — so take this top 30 ranking loosely.

1. work at home jobs
2. marketing jobs
3. medical jobs
4. sales jobs
5. accounting jobs
6. airport jobs
7. art jobs
8. bank jobs
9. warehouse jobs
10. college jobs
11. computer jobs
12. construction jobs
13. data entry jobs
14. driver jobs
15. security jobs		 16. engineering jobs
17. entry level jobs
18. environmental jobs
19. federal jobs
20. finance jobs
21. government jobs
22. healthcare jobs
23. education jobs
24. hotel jobs
25. insurance jobs
26. international jobs
27. hr jobs
28. legal jobs
29. nursing jobs
30. law enforcement jobs

top 100 job board nichesIf this is in any way useful or interesting to you, please share it with your friends or readers if you are a blogger! If the response is sufficiently positive, you may encourage me to publish more research. Here are all 100 categories and their job boards arranged alphabetically:

Legend

  • anonymous! - no information on the about-page or contact-us about who owns or runs this website
  • association – site is operated by a trade association
  • free - free for employers
  • growing! – compete.com shows significant and consistent traffic growth
  • IAEWS - displays International Association of Employment Web Sites logo

accounting

administrative, data entry & secretary


advertising

aerospace

agriculture

airline

apparel

architecture

arts

audit

automotive

aviation

banking

biotech

broadcast

brokerage

callcenter

chemical

child care

college

communications

computer & systems

construction

consulting

consumer


corporate

courier

creative

customer service

database


defense

delivery & courier

design

distribution

diversity


driver

education

engineering

entry-level & college

environmental

executive

facilities

fashion

finance and investment

fitness & wellness

food service

forestry

government

hardware

healthcare & medical

home

hospitality& hotel

hourly

hr

insurance

international

internet

internship

investment

journalism

laboratory & technician

law enforcement

law

logistics and distribution

maintenance

management & corporate

manufacturing

marketing

media

medical

merchandising

mining

modeling

news

non profit

nurse

oil

operations

pharmaceutical

pharmacy

pr

printing

project

publishing

qa

radio

real estate

recruiting

restaurant

retail

safety

sales

science

seasonal

secretary

security

senior and retirement

software

sports

supply

systems

tax

technician

technology

telecom & wireless

textiles

therapy

tourism & travel

training

transportation & airport

tv

underwriting

utility

veterinary

veteran

volunteer

warehouse

wellness

wireless

Qestions or suggestions? This is a difficult exercise and I welcome your questions and suggestions!

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{ 37 comments }

Harry Joiner June 12, 2008 at 10:17 am

Eric,
Thanks for putting together this list. There is so much clutter in the job board space that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. You list is a start — although Weddell’s lists 40K jobsites. Hard to believe.
Hopefully one day http://www.OnlineRetailJobs.com will make this list!
Nice job,
Harry Joiner

** es ** thanks Harry! 

Todd Goldstein June 18, 2008 at 7:40 pm

Eric,
Thanks for including AccountingJobsToday.com in the Accounting Category and I really appreciate making the list. I especially enjoyed reading your methodology and and your definition of the maniac entrepreneur, which sounds very familiar to me. AccountingJobsToday is also a member of IAEWS and we have included your Internet 100 logo on our about us page Thanks again for what you are doing.
Todd

** es ** many thanks Todd! We are also using the logo on our employers page and here.

I have updated the page for you. I started doing the IAEWS flag midway through my research and knew I had left a couple out…

Michael Rogers June 20, 2008 at 10:02 am

Seems odd that certain really popular sites are blatantly left out of this list. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxJobs, for instance, is not listed under xxxxxxxxxx? CareerMetaSearch.com is not listed anywhere? What about regional sites? Pretty weak stuff.

** es ** I spent a lot of time looking at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxjobs.com – it was one of the most difficult to evaluate.  Is a blog really a job board?  I think it could be depending on the implementation but this one fails a lot of basic credibility tests. This particular site is plastered with non-original content and advertising from indeed.com and google.com to the point where it’s hard to find anything. The link to information about the founder in the about page is broken.

The balance of evidence here points to a website owner extracting every conceivable dollar of value created with little regard for the candidates. I concluded that this website was search engine spam.

Perhaps I am wrong, but your comments about the site shed no light on the issue.  This is a great example of a job board coasting in a low competition environment but headed for rapid decline without an injection of blood sweat and tears by its absentee owner. 

Michael Rogers June 20, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Well I disagree about xxxxxxxxxxxxxxJobs – it has lots of original content and has been delivering original job listings (not listed anywhere else) and articles since it launched in 2006. Apparently you dont subscribe to the eNewsletter xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Careers like 50,000 other people do. Just click on the eNewsletter section and start reading.

To blast a site, owner and its content with no knowledge of its readership is pretty lame. xxxxxxxxxx and plenty of other partners & clients feel its a pretty good little site. Same could be said for other sites you left out like CareerMetaSearch.com or perhaps PaidContent.org. Yeah some of these sites may border on being blogs but so what? This reeks of NicheBoards.com – one of the biggest scams in the job board industry. A small group of sites that self-proclaim they are the leaders in their industry niche.

** es ** just checked compete.com to make sure that I didn’t clearly make an obvious mistake and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxjobs.com currently has less traffic than any of the sites I listed. Considering that wirelessjobs.com is only months old, that should be a wake-up call. I am not bashing your site, just saying it is not the best choice for this list based on fairly consistent criteria.

This has nothing at all to do with nicheboards.com which is akin to a small trade association with monthly dues. if you turn your focus to creating value and building credibility I will gladly add you to this list and it won’t cost you a penny.

Anonymous June 21, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Eric This thread was brought to my attention. I operate xxxxxxxxxxxxxxJobs and don’t know anyone named Michael Rogers nor appreciate your attacks. While we appreciate his support, it is not his site nor is he employed by us. Our client base and partnerships (i.e. xxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxxx.com, etc) have given us enough credibility without needing this list to validate our existence.

I appreciate you pointing out the dead link on the site and will fix accordingly. But before you convince your readership of falsehoods like we get less traffic than ALL of the other sites, this is simply not the case.
Visit http://www.quantcast.com/xxxxxxxxxjobs.com/traffic for our stats as Quantcast code rests on our server and Compete.com code does not – thus offering more accurate numbers.

As far as original content goes, we publish one HR interview and one HR article each month along with unique job postings not available on any other site from some of the industry’s top employers.
Visit our site and just look at our past history. So I’m not sure the motivation behind this, but please remove us from your site entirely as we did not volunteer to be dragged into this discussion.

** es ** Gladly! Your name and your site’s name has been removed. I have no interest in highlighting anyone’s defects.

Your cohort (who used some of the same exact language as you did when talking about your website) called my research ‘weak’ without even reading my discussion of the methods and criteria used. In my defense, I walked him through the decision-making process I went through with your site.

Regarding traffic levels, looking at your Quantcast data would not shed any new light on the question. Sure, we’ll find out that your actual traffic is higher than what compete.com estimates. In all likelihood, your competitors traffic is also higher than compete.com’s estimate. Only if all your competitors have the Quantcast code on their site would we learn something from it about your relative traffic levels.

Original content? Great, make it easier to find than cpc ads and 3rd party content…

I wish you luck.

Ami Dar June 21, 2008 at 3:49 pm

Hi Eric,
I run Idealist.org, and it was great to see that ‘wow’ by our name.
Thank you!
Ami

** es ** my pleasure, you have more than earned it Ami!

Jim Girardeau May 28, 2009 at 4:52 pm

Social services would be a great niche to add since the number of job openings exceed many of the other niches included here. If you do add it, be sure to include the huge social service job site that’s been around since 1997, SocialService.Com.
http://www.SocialService.Com

**es** you are included in the 2009 top 100 Jim, congratulations!

Austin June 27, 2008 at 3:56 pm

While disappointing not to see myfirstpaycheck.com up there with Snagajob.com and the other hourly employment sites, it gives us something else to shoot for for the future!

Robert Rosenthal May 29, 2009 at 7:22 pm

Hi all – Robert here from VolunteerMatch.org. Great list! Really glad to see the volunteering (especially skilled volunteering) is included as a valuable component of job searching. I’d go one step further though: not only should volunteering your skills be an important component of marketing yourself for a new job, but it has huge potential to help people learn and grow in the role they already have. I see so many stories of people who have really developed their leadership and professionalism through skilled service outside of the office. It’s baffling to me that more employers don’t see the value of investing in programs to help their staff get out and grow in volunteer roles beyond the front door. But enough – great list. Keep up the good work!

 **es** thanks Robert, good message!

rob June 30, 2008 at 3:07 pm

is too wide to be considered as a niche, Eric…
ElecroJob is a unique job listing site, specialising in jobs for ONLY electrical/electronic pros all around the UK. And only UK.
Anyway – Eric – this is great ranking. brilliant job.
Maybe it’s time for UK Top 100 job board niches??
Tara

** es ** you have a point! there are dozens of engineering specialties and each one will eventually have its own thriving job boards.  thank you.

Jason Alba July 8, 2008 at 10:26 am

Eric, excellent job. I just blogged about it at the JibberJobber.com blog.
Narrowing 40k+ boards down to a hundred… quite a job. This will serve as a great resource for my job seekers, and it will be fun to see how it changes/evolves (yes, I think you committed yourself to a long-term project :p).

Jason Alba
CEO – JibberJobber.com

** es ** thank you Jason, I enjoyed reading your post – it’s dead on!

 

Jonathan July 9, 2008 at 2:13 pm

I love the list and was thinking that perhaps next time you would add religion as a niche category. I would like to see our board make it there – http://www.nyjewishjobboard.com

** es ** that is quite a niche Jonathan!  The categories are chosen by jobseekers searching on Google, not by me… 

jonathan July 15, 2008 at 9:47 am

Eric,
This article from Fast Company magazine may point out just how much religion is a job board niche. Perhaps your methodology does not factor in job seekers who do not use Google to find their niche sites. This may be the case for religion or other ethnic based sites where people may learn of these sites through banners/links on other religion-based sites or through church/synagogue newsletters etc.

** es **  that’s a possibility… thanks Jonathan.

Robert July 24, 2008 at 5:59 pm

What an odd list. Some of these sites have never worked correctly, and I’ve checked them out for years on occasion…careers-in-finance.com for example. And there is nothing but garbage on it. It’s not alone. I would take any of the sites at http://www.CareerSitesCompany.com over most of these. At least there is some pleasant pictures and useful things to do, something the other web sites makers / affiliate marketers left out. One big pile of text and links is no fun or nice to sort through. Any site, like HJ, dice, Mnstr, CareerBuilder that does not provide job openings from all boards, company sites, etc. is fairly useless nowadays. All in one search sites are the only way to go.

** es **  Robert, you are right that careers-in-finance.com doesn’t belong in a list like this and I have replaced them with careerbank.com whose ranking improved dramatically for the term ‘finance jobs’ since I released this list. There are still a few other sites that I am embarrassed to have in this list, but they sit in categories with little competition.  Thank you for pointing this out. I added your site  to my list of job board networks

GMA July 26, 2008 at 12:23 pm

I’d say you should include a new category (freelancer jobs) and put there http://www.elance.com, http://www.getafreelancer.com + update the list (I guess it falls under engineering) with http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com. And finally… under "operations" you list no website. So why do you have the cateogry without any site? DO you have an update for "operations"…. the same is valid for consulting and consumers

** es **   Freelancer was not one of the top 100 most searched categories. But, oil is… I updated the oil category with your website which is well done and has about the same traffic as the boards that rank for ‘oil jobs’.  Many categories like ‘operations’ had no sites meeting the criteria.

John Mellor August 4, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Eric -
Great list! I was, however, wondering why workinsports.com was not mentioned in the sports niche. If you search the term “sports jobs” on Google, you will find that workinsports.com always appears in the top three so i am not sure how you could of missed us. According to compete.com, our traffic is more than twice our nearest competitor (jobsinsports.com) and more than five times that of sportscareerfinder.com. By competitor, I refer to subscription-based sports industry job boards. We have been around for 8 years and have definitely established ourselves as the leaders in this niche. We are also the only IAEWS members in this category (and we display the logo with imense pride). Please let me know what is takes to be considered for inclusion on this page and be considered for the top 100.
Thanks you for managing this great resource.
John Mellor – President & CEO, WorkInSports.com

** es ** thank you for writing John — I suspect you may have ranked fourth when I put together the list.  There was a lot of volatility in the last couple of months.  Often, the results vary widely depending on where you search Google from. But, if not, then I made a mistake. Anyhow, I have added you to the list and congratulations on your business!

Carolina Sanchez November 26, 2008 at 10:39 am

Hello,
We have looked through the following page on your site and noticed that you have a "jobs" section in which several sites were listed.
(http://www.internetinc.com/top-100-job-board-niches/)
We would like to recommend the addition of our site OpcionEmpleo (http://www.OpcionEmpleo.com), an employment search engine for Spain. In one simple search, OpcionEmpleo gives the job seeker access to a massive selection of jobs that are compiled from various internet sources, saving the trouble of having to visit each site individually.
Some of our embeddable tools might be of interest to you:
JobBox – see http://www.opcionempleo.com/partners/jobbox.html
SearchBox – see http://www.opcionempleo.com/partners/searchbox.html
We hope this site will interest you and can be included in your listings.
Thank you.
Carolina Sanchez
carolina@opcionempleo.com

**es** thanks for writing Carolina – this page is for US job boards only but I will add you to the widget page and the vertical job search engine list!

Zad I. December 3, 2008 at 12:55 am

I haven’t seen a list such as this anywhere, and as informative. Lots of job boards here that I personally have not heard of before, which I am going to check out. Our site Casino Careers Online – http://www.casinocareers.com a Niche Gaming-Technology Hospitality Site will be looking forward to a spot on your list in the future! By the way, this page has been stumbled!

**es** thanks Zad!

Benny Bandit December 5, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Great site but what a about some UK information ? he he he he he he he he

 **es** wish I could, but hard to keep up with all the projects I’ve already started!

Jay Lohmann December 12, 2008 at 12:13 am

Freelance job, Contract positions and temporary employment.

http://www.TheFreelanceNation.com

Find Freelance Jobs and Freelancers.

Dan Keller January 15, 2009 at 1:08 pm

Eric,
Thanks Eric, I love reading your stuff and always check you out on recruitingblogs. I wanted to suggest a "teen jobs" category. There is a ton of google searches on "teen jobs" around 40,000 as opposed to 3,000 for underwriting jobs.

Please consider for 2009, and also please consider TeenJobScene.com for inclusion in that category. We just launched on January 1st and the response has been terrific, I suspect that when you are researching for next year we will be at the top of the heap.
Regards,
Dan

**es**  thanks Dan – you’re right, I see that much has changed since the previous ranking!

Willie February 3, 2009 at 2:03 pm

I was impressed with the comments and some new sites to search.

Dan February 16, 2009 at 9:00 pm

JobSerf.com searches and applies to jobs for you at a nominal fee. This takes the headache out of the job search as they not only do the searching for you but also apply. You get a spreadsheet that details the positions applied to on your behalf. Very cool!

Cam February 18, 2009 at 10:17 pm

The Nuclear Power Industry is a BIG growth industry which has numerous positions open that can be filled by non-nuclear experienced people. Check it out on http://www.NuclearStreet.com.

Mick February 22, 2009 at 8:49 pm

Eric, great snapshot of the US Niche Jobs Market. What about overseas sporting job boards? We recently spent some time listing some top sports job boards from around the world. Based on John Mellor’s comments above, maybe we could have included his site in our list. There is always next time. Well done.

 **es** thanks Mick, that’s quite a niche!

Paul Adams March 4, 2009 at 10:20 am

One of your trucking links is being blocked by Google as a phishing site, and you might want to remove the link. It is http://www.1800drivers.com. When searching for these truck driving jobs, I came across http://www.findatruckingjob.com that seems to be a pretty good site if you just want to switch the links out.

**es** thanks Paul, I will be working on a new list soon…

Sherley March 13, 2009 at 2:57 am

I am looking forward to share with my blog visitors and readers.

Thanks!

Isaac Mendelson April 7, 2009 at 7:13 am

ElectroMagneticCareers.com is a jobsite focused exclusively on RF and microwave engineers (wireless communications, antenna, radar, EW, satellite EMC, testing, etc.).

Operated By Engineers for Engineers
We are different in the sense that we were established by RF engineers and operate from within the engineering community.

Industry Affiliations
ElectroMagneticCareers.com is affiliated with the leading engineering publications in the industry: The Microwave Journal (www.mwjournal.com) and Interference Technology (www.interferencetechnology.com) websites, gaining additional exposure to vacancies posted with us.

Bringing Employment Agenda to the Engineering Media
ElectroMagneticCareers.com succeeded in bringing the employment and career agenda into the professional / technical media.

Reaching Passive Candidates
Our involvement within the community enables us to reach the passive candidates: Those hard-to-find microwave qualified RF and microwave engineers who are listed in public domain.

Todd April 2, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Not sure if you still maintain the list bu http://www.crnaemployment.com is a good niche nursing job board for nurse anesthetists

**es** working on ’09 list, thanks.

Jason May 6, 2009 at 5:30 pm

You forgot to mention http://www.iitjobs.com .Its a pure IT specific niche job board.Its pretty good IMHO.

Steven Rothberg June 18, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Thank you for including CollegeRecruiter.com in your list of the top 100 job boards and its entry level category. Please note that we’re a proud member of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS). If you could update our list to reflect that, we would greatly appreciate it.

** es ** Steven, thank you for pointing it out – I have added the IAEWS flag for you.

Dennis Smith June 18, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Hey Eric – thanks for the nod in this article! Since we’ve really only been "official" for a few months, it’s very cool to get a mention.
I will gladly notify all the members of the WirelessJobs.com community! : )
Dennis

** es ** So you don’t mind if I call you "Dennis the Maniac"… lol, you rock pal!

Amitai Givertz June 19, 2008 at 7:24 am

Thanks for putting this together. Looks like a great resource.

** es ** thanks to you Ami for brainstorming with me, it was very helpful!

RecruiterGuy June 19, 2008 at 8:37 am

Eric, a truly great list. A terrific starting point for job seekers on the hunt for something above and beyond the major boards.

Gave you a quick re-blog on RecruiterGuy.net.

Thanks for putting this together – it’s nice to see some of my favorites made the list. :-)

RecruiterGuy

** es ** thank you Chris, love your introduction video on your blog!!

dwight June 20, 2008 at 3:49 pm

Great list! Thanks for taking the time to make it. We are a new regional job board that launched in January 2008. We are helping local companies fill important job openings, having fun and making $. Please check us out when you get the chance. http://www.newjobtree.com and would you suggest a small site like ours join the IAEWS? Thanks for your input.
Dwight

** es ** When you are new and when you have competition, you need absolutely every sliver of credibility that you can drum up. I would absolutely join. When did you launch? I will add you to my recent job board launches list.

Vishal Singh July 22, 2009 at 3:40 pm

Hi,

We are a niche staffing firm for heavy equipment and diesel truck mechanics and managers. We hope to be on this list soon as well as we have built up the large list of mechanic jobs for the heavy equipment and truck industry. We have also built a social community around mechanics to help offer advice and more.

We welcome you to check us out.

http://www.mechanicshub.com
http://www.maizisandmiller.com

Kristin October 26, 2009 at 10:29 pm

We are a 22+ year association of recruiters specializing in accounting, tax, audit and financial services. Our website, SearchAccountingJobs.com, is FREE to job seekers and helps connect those seeking employment opportunities with recruiters who have access to jobs not generally publicized. We’d like to request inclusion in your list.
Thank you!

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