Best Remote Job Boards for Agencies to Find Talent
Digital agencies are all about people. That means finding the right talent at the right price and in the right location.
But what if your location is flexible?
Both of my businesses are fully remote. While this comes with its own set of pros and cons, I have been able to learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to finding the best remote talent.
In this blog post, I wanted to share the best (and worst) remote job boards I’ve found. While I know there are plenty more, these are the select few I can personally vouch for. The truth is, you don’t need more applicants, you need the right applicants, and often, that means using the right job board.
Best Remote Job Boards for Digital Agencies
1. Dynamite Jobs
I love niche job boards, and Dynamite Jobs is one of the best for hiring remote, international contractors. Founded by the founders of Tropical MBA, this job board attracts a lot of entrepreneurial expatriots looking for unique, high-autonomy jobs that favor output to clocking in and clocking out.
The “post a job” page is also pretty unique as it lets you see how many potential applicants there are for a role based on your criteria and budget.
- Price: $399+
- Strength: Access to hidden talent gems internationally, entrepreneurial candidates
- Weakness: Some noise and less accurate filtering data than bigger job boards
2. RemoteOk
Founded a decade ago by Peter Levels, this is one of the first remote-only job boards I found, and I’ve always gotten good results from it. Because it attracts employees who have worked remotely before, you can often find self-starters who don’t show up as easily in Linkedin job listings. That said, the pool isn’t huge for leadership-level talent, so expect more luck hiring individual contributors or fractional help than full-time leaders here.
- Price: $491+
- Strength: Simple, user friendly interface to make posting and applying easier on both sides
- Weakness: Limited depth for leadership roles, no built-in ATS or filtering
3. We Work Remotely
We Work Remotely was launched in 2011 by 37Signals, the team behind Basecamp, and has since grown into one of the largest and most recognizable job boards focused exclusively on remote work. Its longevity and clean reputation among bootstrappers and startups give it strong reach, especially for tech and product roles.
It’s particularly well-suited for hiring full-time team members in engineering, design, and marketing. While it casts a wide net and consistently attracts quality candidates, it may be less useful for fractional or hyper-specialized contractors due to its full-time-centric posting structure and limited applicant filtering tools.
- Price: $299+
- Strength: Large and engaged audience, especially good for full-time remote roles
- Weakness: Fewer freelance/fractional applicants, limited sorting capabilties compared with bigger job boards.
4. Linkedin
Linkedin is the elephant in the room when it comes to hiring, but for me, it’s been a mixed bag. The more junior roles I’ve published do exceptionally well on Linkedin and get tons of qualified applicants, while some more senior roles never get a single qualified app. A lot of this comes down to budget: the smaller your budget, the worse your reach; so, if you have an extremely competitive senior role, this might get pricey.
That said, the targeting tools are decent if you’re looking for applicants within the US. It’s just not as easy to open a role to all countries without inviting a lot more noise.
- Price: Variable
- Strength: Large reach, decent filtering tools, good for junior/mid-level hires
- Weakness: Lots of noise, targeting outside US is cumbersome
5. Niche Communities and Newsletters
Finally, another creative way to source candidates that aren’t getting picked up in traditional job boards is to leverage niche communities and newsletters. For example, in the early days of Draft.dev, I hired a few editors and writers from the Write the Docs community.
- Price: Variable
- Strength: Hyper targeted, few competitors, good for more senior hires
- Weakness: Smaller audience and reach
While the price and strengths of the job boards above varies, I’ve found all of them to be good value for the money, and depending on the situation, I’ll use each of them (or all of them) on my future hires.
Job Boards That Have Not Worked for Me
Now that we’ve reviewed the job boards that work, it’s only fair to mention the ones that just haven’t worked for me. I don’t doubt that these options can be effective in the right situation, but I’ve tried each of these multiple times without success, so they’re just not sites that I can get to work.
Here are the job boards and hiring options that haven’t worked for me:
- TopTal - I like the idea of pre-vetted talent, but the results I’ve gotten have been overpriced, mediocre employees. From what I’ve heard, the company culture is quite toxic, and I think this bleeds over into their philosophy on customer support and satisfaction.
- Indeed - For some industries, Indeed is the option for hiring, but for remote workers, I’ve always gotten much more junk than on other platforms. The cost is low, but the quality is too, so I no longer waste my time.
- Contingency Recruiters - We used recruiters a lot when I worked in tech startups, and it was almost always a waste of time. They tend to favor their bigger clients, so small agencies likely won’t get the best applicants or much individualized attention from contingency recruiters.
So that’s my list of remote job boards I use and don’t use. Don’t take my word for it though, if you’ve got your own favorites, I want to hear about them. Email me at [email protected] so I can learn about them!