Every job board is a copy of somewhere else, arriving later.
This one isn't about any particular product. Aggregators exist to pull jobs from many places into one searchable index, which is a useful thing to be. It also puts two unavoidable delays between a job existing and you knowing about it.
Index, then notify. We drop the first step, and the second stops being a schedule.
Side by side
Each row is how that tool is built to work, taken from what it says about itself. None of this is a benchmark we ran.
| job boards | Trakker | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | An index built from crawls and syndication feeds | The employer's live hiring system |
| Delay before you can be told | Crawl interval, plus indexing, plus the alert schedule | One pass, usually minutes |
| Duplicates and dead listings | Common, because sources disagree and expiry is guessed at | One row per job, keyed on the employer's own job id |
| Who it's for | Everyone, so the filters are generic | Students and new grads, so level is a first-class filter |
What job boards are better at
Breadth and browsing. If you don't yet know what you want or which companies you'd work for, a big searchable index beats a targeted alert feed, and there's no substitute for it at that stage.
When not to switch
Early in a search, when the question is still what to apply for and not when. Speed only becomes the thing that matters once you know which jobs you want.
The detail
- The dead posting problem
- An aggregator usually can't see a job close. It can only see that the job stopped showing up in a feed, which is why boards carry roles that were filled a fortnight ago. Reading the source means a job's existence and its disappearance come from the same place.
Other comparisons
- Trakker vs LinkedIn job alertsAn alert built on an index can't be faster than the crawl that feeds it. Reading the employer's hiring system removes that step.
- Trakker vs HandshakeOne feed is defined by your school's employer list. The other is defined by the employers' own career pages, which is a different and much larger set.
- Trakker vs GitHub internship listsA repo is something you have to remember to check. An alert is something that finds you.