With a record number of jobs open, employers are struggling to fill positions and are naturally turning to the job boards to advertise and target qualified employees. ZipRecruiter is one of the new kids on the block and it’s giving older, more established boards like Monster and CareerBuilder a run for their money. But is all of the hype true? To determine if this platform is a good fit for your hiring needs, here are some pros and cons you may encounter with ZipRecruiter: 

• While ZipRecruiter does a great job of blasting your job to hundreds (even thousands) of people it thinks are qualified, we still see the same issues that are common on other job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder—namely, there is still a small pool of applicants that actually end up being a strong match for your job.

• ZipRecruiter’s algorithm is designed to become more refined over time. This sounds great in theory, but in practice it means you have to do the work to refine their search tool. You’ll see a massive number of resumes from candidates that Zip thinks may be a fit, but their algorithm requires someone on your team to take the time to look at all of those resumes and effectively rate them as “qualified” or “not qualified.” Then, the next batch of resumes you receive is supposedly composed of candidates who are a closer match to what you’re looking for. This sounds nice, but if you don’t have someone on your team with hours to spend scanning 1,000+ resumes and sorting them into “good” and “bad” piles—you’re not going to see resumes with the skills and work experience that you want.

• ZipRecruiter promises you can post a job for free, but that is a tad misleading. The real deal is that you can post a job for free for 4 days—and that’s if you give them a credit card number. Then you have to remember to cancel your subscription if you don’t want to continue it.

• There are a few pros to Zip though, and the biggest one is that you don’t have to sign a contract. This is a pretty big deal when you consider the cost and commitment involved in signing a contract with LinkedIn, Monster, or CareerBuilder.

• Another pro is that if you’re looking to fill an entry level role or one that doesn’t require experience and job stability, ZipRecruiter has one of the largest resume pools we’ve seen—so it’s a great way to get your job seen by literally hundreds of people.

• Connecting with highly skilled candidates who have relevant experience and a stable work history is hard—and the job boards don’t generally yield great results for job descriptions that have a lot of boxes to check. For these roles, we think LinkedIn’s recruiter platform continues to be the best source for professional, highly skilled employees. It’s pricy, but we always say, “You get what you pay for.”

Want to know more? Ask us your HR, Recruiting, and Hiring questions via the online chat tool in the lower left corner of your screen.