Great Products for Finding Startup Jobs
A curated list of the best websites for job searching in tech. Updated Feb 2018.
During the last few years, there’s been a veritable explosion of technology-focused recruiting products for engineers, product managers, designers, and other technologists. Below is an ongoing list of the more popular and effective products on the market. I’ve compiled this list from internal competitive research and feedback from hiring managers, recruiters, job seekers, and others in the recruiting world. (I run a hiring marketplace. More info on that role at the end of the post.)
Curated Marketplaces
With candidates on one side of the market and companies on the other, these products sit in the middle and charge companies for access (typically on a per hire, per introduction, or subscription basis).
- A-List — Given AngelList’s access to candidates and companies, this product has the potential to be a leader in the space, but it’s still early. This is the company’s second or third iteration of a curated product.
- Anthology — Curated marketplace with a focus on anonymity, which makes it great for “passive” jobseekers. Strong West Coast presence, especially in Seattle.
- CloserIQ — Curated marketplace with a niche focus on sales jobs. Proven traction with startups that are scaling quickly.
- Hired — Far and away the leader in this segment. Those who pass the company’s curation algorithm get shown to thousands of tech companies. Upfront emphasis on salary transparency. Rapid growth may have contributed to a noisier experience for both sides of the market.
- Indeed Prime — A relative newcomer in the space, but backed by Indeed’s deep pockets and offering rich signing bonuses for candidates that get hired by one of their customers.
- InterviewJet — Curated marketplace with a niche focus on technical and product roles in NYC. Affiliated with Mitchell Martin, a recruiting agency.
- Planted — Curated marketplace with a niche focus on junior non-technical roles in NYC. Good access to TechStars classes in NYC.
- TripleByte — The best product for engineers looking to access the Y Combinator startup network. Emphasis on online evaluations over traditional hiring deliverables.
- Toptal — Curated marketplace with a niche focus on freelance workers. Very high talent bar and big international presence. Works with companies of all sizes and stages.
- Underdog.io — Good coverage of technical, product, and business roles for tech companies in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Effective for experienced candidates, can be hit-or-miss for others.
- untapt — Curated marketplace with a niche focus on traditional finance firms (e.g. hedge funds) and fintech companies in NYC.
- Vettery — Started in fintech, but moving aggressively into the tech space. Heavy NYC presence. Candidate experience can feel more “recruiter-like” than other products, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
- Whitetruffle — Largely in San Francisco and only for engineers, designers, and product managers. Early entrant in the space. Recent ownership changes have led to some product and business model tweaks.
Job Boards
These products charge companies for job posts that are presented to candidates in list format (typically with very little curation).
- AngelList — Largest startup-focused community in the world with an extensive list of open jobs that span many cities. Easy to find interesting listings, harder to overcome the low signal-to-noise ratio and get in touch with a recruiter or hiring manager.
- Authentic Jobs––Design-focused job board that caters to creatives. Thanks in part to heavier-than-usual curation, it’s chock full of unique jobs at agencies, startups, and media companies.
- Craigslist — The original job board that’s managed to survive near-constant attempts at disruption. Home to some interesting opportunities (usually in fintech) if you have the patience to filter through the noise.
- Dice — Generalist job board with openings from predominantly larger companies (Amazon, Bloomberg, etc.). Be sure to check the posted dates on their jobs; some are outdated.
- Dribbble — Specialized job board for design roles with relatively low job volume. Not the company’s primary product.
- GitHub Jobs — Specialized job board for engineering roles with relatively low job volume. Not the company’s primary product.
- Glassdoor — Generalist job board with decent coverage of small and large companies. Integrates nicely with Glassdoor’s salary and company reviews products.
- Hacker News—Not a job board, per se, but the HN Who’s Hiring post at the start of every month has dozens of engineering-focused job posts. HN also regularly pushes select YC jobs to the front page.
- Jopwell––The leading career advancement platform for Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals.
- LinkedIn — Entrenched job behemoth that, in conjunction with its other hiring tools (and much to the chagrin of engineers), is still the leader in the job board segment. Be prepared for an onslaught of recruiter email if you go this route.
- Product Hunt — Startup-focused job board with relatively low job volume. Not the company’s primary product.
- Stack Overflow — Engineering-heavy job board with job listings from around the world that integrates nicely with Stack Overflow’s broader ecosystem.
- The Muse — Generalist job board with an emphasis on non-technical roles. Nice compliment to The Muse’s company-specific content engine. The UI is similar to that of LinkedIn’s job board.
- WayUp — Job board with a niche focus on college students and recent graduates. Great coverage of Fortune 500 companies. Far and away the segment leader for young professionals.
- We Work Remotely — Job board with a niche focus on remote tech jobs. Pretty engineering and design/product-heavy. Maintained by Basecamp.
- Working Not Working — Job board with a niche focus on creative roles. Also an invite-only network of creative professionals with a focus on freelance projects.
Job Search Engines
These products offer third-party job post aggregation and distribution and can be viewed as a “one stop shop” for job searches. I‘m not including individual summaries because, by and large, these products look, feel, and function the same way.
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About This List: My goal was not to document every recruiting product in the world, but instead to highlight those that we hear about the most and from which job seekers can benefit the most. With that in mind, I opted to focus on products that (a) have broad reach and validated industry traction, and (b) are primarily suited for full-time, U.S.-based job seekers.
Disclosure: My company operates two recruiting products: Underdog.io and Sourcing.io. Our work gives us some domain expertise, but it also presents a potential conflict of interest. We’ve attempted to remove bias from this post by combining our own analysis with feedback from recruiters, hiring managers, job seekers, and others in our industry.
Feedback: Did we mess up? Please email me and I’ll try to sort things out.
