Top 100 job board niches - 2008

top niche job boardsThis is a guide to the top 100 US job board niches in 2008. For each employment niche it lists the top 3 or 4 niche job boards. This report excludes:

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 something special, 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 about methods used and further observations. If you are job searching, you may also find our CareerAdviceBlogs.com helpful.

If you skip this, just remember you could keep very busy wasting your precious time with job boards - 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.

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
  • jobseekers pay - jobseekers must pay to see jobs or contact information
  • no dates on jobs - jobs could be several years old and site defunct
  • registration required - jobseekers must register to see jobs

accounting accounting jobs

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? Please read further observations and analysis first... this was a difficult exercise and I welcome your questions and suggestions!

back to top


Harry Joiner (not verified) - Great List!

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! 

June 12, 2008 - 9:17am

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.

June 18, 2008 - 1:12pm

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!

June 18, 2008 - 3:52pm
Todd Goldstein (not verified) - Great list

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...

June 18, 2008 - 6:40pm
Amitai Givertz (not verified) - Nice Job!

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

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

June 19, 2008 - 6:24am
RecruiterGuy (not verified) - Thanks, Eric!

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!!

June 19, 2008 - 7:37am
Michael Rogers (not verified) - Too many sites not included...

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. 

June 20, 2008 - 9:02am
dwight (not verified) - Thanks!

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. 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.

June 20, 2008 - 2:49pm
Michael Rogers (not verified) - Too many sites not included

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.

June 20, 2008 - 3:28pm
Ami Dar (not verified) - Thank you!

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!

June 21, 2008 - 2:49pm
Anonymous (not verified) - xxxxxxxxxxxxxxJobs.com

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.
June 21, 2008 - 4:03pm

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!
June 27, 2008 - 2:56pm
rob (not verified) - engineering

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.

June 30, 2008 - 2:07pm
Jason Alba (not verified) - Love the list

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!

 

July 8, 2008 - 9:26am
Jonathan (not verified) - Religion Niche

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 - www.nyjewishjobboard.com

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

July 9, 2008 - 1:13pm
jonathan (not verified) - Religion Niche

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.

July 15, 2008 - 8:47am
Robert (not verified) - Not sure about the list

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 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

July 24, 2008 - 4:59pm
GMA (not verified) - Offshore oil

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.

July 26, 2008 - 11:23am
John Mellor (not verified) - Sports Niche

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!

August 4, 2008 - 2:52pm
Carolina Sanchez (not verified) - Hello, We have looked

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!

November 26, 2008 - 10:39am
Zad I. (not verified) - Great List

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 - 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!

December 3, 2008 - 12:55am

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!

December 5, 2008 - 3:54pm

Freelance job, Contract positions and temporary employment. http://www.TheFreelanceNation.com Find Freelance Jobs and Freelancers.
December 12, 2008 - 12:13am

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