Job boards range from large general sites to niche boards for specific sectors, such as healthcare, technology or hospitality. Employers usually pay per listing, per click or through a subscription, and many boards also let recruiters search a CV database. Adverts are often posted from an applicant tracking system, which sends the same vacancy to several boards and records which one each applicant came from.
Boards are often the largest single source of applicants, which makes them useful for volume but also means a high share of applications may not meet the core requirements. Tracking source of hire and qualified applicant rate per board shows where spend is actually producing hires. Screening every applicant consistently, whichever board they came from, keeps the comparison fair.