Should I apply through the job board or the company website?

What happens to a job board application

It depends on the board. Some hand you straight through to the employer's applicant tracking system, in which case the route makes no difference at all. Others send a profile or an email instead of the application the employer designed, and the screening questions on the company form never get asked.

LinkedIn Easy Apply is the common case. It is fast, which is the point of it, but the recruiter often receives your profile and a stored CV rather than the version you wrote for that role.

Why the company site is the better route

• Your CV arrives as the PDF you formatted, not as a re-rendered profile.
• You answer the screening questions the employer actually wrote, which is often what the first filter runs on.
• The posting on a careers page is current, whereas boards keep listings alive after a role has closed.
• You can see which applicant tracking system the company uses, which tells you how your application will be stored and searched.

When the board is fine

Use the board when its apply button links straight to greenhouse.io, lever.co, ashbyhq.com or the company's own domain, because that is the same application either way. Use it when there is no other route, which happens with agency-listed roles and with companies that publish nowhere else.

Do not apply through both. Duplicate applications create duplicate records, and the second one tells the recruiter nothing the first did not.

How we do it

We read postings from company applicant tracking systems rather than from aggregators, so the link you get is the employer's own application form and the role is one we have seen live at the source.