Pay job boards - should job seekers spend money to find a job?

From the start of job boards in the mid 1990s until now, the vast majority of job and career sites have worked on a simple economic model: job seekers don’t pay, employers do. In fact, the concept of free access to a job site’s listings was so ingrained that TheLadders actually garnered quite a bit of publicity by requiring job seekers to pay when it launched in 2004. Although still uncommon, ‘pay’ sites have gathered some momentum during the last 2 years of recession – a result of seekers desperate to gain any kind of advantage in the job market.

The question remains, though: are ‘pay’ sites worth it? A good place to start is by asking this question: Are you getting something unique and useful from the ‘pay’ site that you can’t get from a free site? In other words, will you find that perfect job on FlexJobs (a ‘pay’ site for telecommuters) – a job you would never see on Monster or CareerBuilder? Unfortunately, the only way you’ll find out is by trying both and comparing results. As a past user of FlexJobs, for example, I can attest that they were successful in locating telecommute jobs I was unable to find via other means. You should also talk to your friends and professional colleagues – they may have gone through the same process and have good advice on which sites work and which don’t.