Job Boards vs Company Websites: Where to Look for Tech Jobs
Should you search on job boards or on company websites? The short answer: use both, for different things. Job boards and aggregators are good for discovering companies and roles you didn't know about. Company career pages are where postings appear first, where they're most accurate, and usually where you should apply. This post compares the two on freshness, duplicates and reposts, and ends with a routine that combines them without doubling your workload.
How a job posting travels
It helps to know where a listing starts:
- A recruiter creates the role in the company's applicant-tracking system (often Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby).
- The system publishes it to the company's own careers page, usually straight away.
- Some roles are then posted to big boards like LinkedIn or Indeed, sometimes the same day, sometimes later, sometimes never.
- Aggregators pick up copies from careers pages and from other boards on their own schedule.
- When the role closes, the careers page removes it. Copies elsewhere may stay up for a while.
So the careers page is the original, and everything else is a copy that arrives later and may leave later too. We go into the systems themselves in what Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby are.
Side by side
| Job boards and aggregators | Company career pages | |
|---|---|---|
| Freshness | Often behind the original by hours or days | The original; appears first |
| Coverage | Many companies in one search | One company per page |
| Duplicates | Common: the same role from several sources | None: one listing per role |
| Stale listings | Can outlive the real posting | Removed when the role closes |
| Filters | Usually strong: location, level, date | Varies from good to none |
| Alerts | Usually built in | Often missing |
| Where you apply | Sometimes on the board, often redirected | Directly in the recruiter's system |
Neither column wins everywhere. That's the point.
What job boards do well
- Discovery. One search covers hundreds of companies, including ones you'd never think to check. This is their real strength.
- Filters and alerts. Location, date posted, experience level and saved searches are built in.
- Remote-focused boards such as Remotive, Himalayas and Wellfound collect remote roles you'd struggle to find company by company.
- A sense of the market. Browsing a board for a week tells you which titles are common and what companies ask for.
Where job boards cause trouble
- Duplicates. The same role can appear several times: posted by the company, copied by an aggregator, and posted again by a recruitment agency. You spend time reading the same job twice and may apply twice.
- Reposts that look new. Some listings are refreshed or reposted, so "posted 2 days ago" may be the third time you've seen that role. If you recognise the description, check your log.
- Stale copies. An aggregator listing can stay up after the original closed. You tailor your CV, click "apply", and land on a page that says the job no longer exists. We cover this in ghost jobs and stale postings.
- Lost details. Copies can be shortened or lose the location notes that matter most.
What company career pages do well
- They're first. When a role goes live, this is where it appears.
- They're accurate. If it's listed, it's open, at least as far as the company's system knows.
- You apply where the recruiter works. Your application lands straight in their pipeline. For more on the trade-offs of one-click applications, see Easy Apply vs applying on the company site.
Where career pages fall short
- One company at a time. Checking 40 pages by hand is slow.
- No alerts, often. Many have no way to notify you.
- Weak search. Some boards list every role on one long page with no filters.
- You only see companies you already know about.
How to combine them
A routine that uses each for what it's good at:
- Use boards for discovery. Once or twice a week, search boards broadly for your role and region. Don't apply yet; look for companies you didn't know. Add promising ones to your target company list.
- Watch career pages for your list. Bookmark them in one folder or set up alerts. This is where you catch roles early.
- Before applying from a board, open the original. Search the company's careers page for the same title. If it's there, apply there. If it's not, the listing may be stale.
- Keep a log of what you've applied to. It catches duplicates and reposts in seconds.
- Keep board alerts narrow. A board alert that sends fifty listings a day trains you to ignore it. Tighten titles and location until you read every one.
For relocated job seekers
If you've moved and are searching for remote roles open to your region, boards are especially helpful for discovery, because many companies hire remotely in only a few countries and you need to find the ones that include yours. Then check the location line on the original posting before you spend time on the application. More on that in remote IT jobs open to Europe.
Hot Jobs sits between the two: it checks the career pages of 390+ tech companies directly every 30 minutes, plus the Remotive and Himalayas boards, and sends new matching roles to Telegram with a link to the original application page whenever it can find one. It doesn't cover LinkedIn or other boards, so keep using those for discovery. €3, paid once. Connect the bot