Indeed vs. Monster: Which is the Best Job-Posting Site For Employers?

Looking to fill a job opening once and for all?

Indeed and Monster are two of the top options for attracting qualified candidates and turning them into high-quality hires. One company has spent the last two decades building a stellar reputation, while the other built a significantly larger job board in less time.

It’s not as simple as quality vs. quantity, or as straightforward as comparing these conventional job boards against a site that syndicates postings to over 100 boards, like ZipRecruiter. 

There are several key differences between Monster and Indeed — and an understanding of how they differ could be the difference between perpetual interviews and prepping an offer letter. 

So we’re pitting Indeed vs. Monster to help you identify which site will serve your business needs best. 

What is Indeed?

Indeed is a free job board that has plenty of premium options to make life easier for job seekers and employers alike. 

Because it’s free, employers gain access to a diverse candidate pool that’s brimming with talent. And job seekers don’t have to pay a single cent to apply to jobs, upload their resume to Indeed’s database or create job alerts for roles they’re interested in.

For employers, the free features of Indeed take the risk out of testing the waters of the talent pool. But its premium features, such as sponsored postings and a subscription to the resume database, are what help make the talent search efficient on Indeed.

Other top features of Indeed’s job board include company pages, support for third-party applicant-tracking systems and Instant Match: a tool that matches candidate resumes to your job ads.

What is Monster?

Monster delivers many of the same core features as other job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder and ZipRecruiter. For many recruiters and employers, Monster’s standout feature is simplicity.

Creating a job posting is simple. You can choose from more than 2,000 templates to build your job ad. You can also let Monster suggest candidates for your company’s open positions based on factors you specify: skills, location, experience and more.

You can get a taste of what Monster has to offer through a free trial, but you can’t post a job for free as you can with Indeed. While there are no fully free options, Monster offers plenty of support resources to keep your recruitment efforts fruitful and cost-effective.

Unlike Indeed, Monster has its own applicant tracking systems to help manage your recruitment campaign. If you want to use your chosen ATS, you’ll need to use another job board.

Monster offers a library of training content to empower hiring managers and recruiters to make the most of the job board’s tools and features. Plus, the company offers customer support by phone or email during business hours in case you get stuck.

Feature Comparison: Indeed Vs. Monster

Reach and Audience for Job Postings

Just as quality and volume are both key metrics of sales leads, reach shouldn’t be the only metric you use in comparing Indeed vs. Monster. But there’s certainly something to be said of the sheer numbers of people who carry out their job search on Indeed or use it to post jobs.

As for which job site has the better reach, it seems Indeed has a clear advantage here. Indeed averaged about 600 million monthly users in 2021, while Monster attracted a small fraction of that traffic (just under 8 million), according to analytics from SimilarWeb.

Sites like Monster rely in part on presence to compete with massive job boards like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, which will share your job postings to over 100 other job sites. Monster is present in over 50 countries.

With its offering of free job postings, it should come as no surprise that Indeed sees much higher traffic from job seekers and employers.

Pricing: How Much These Job Boards Charge

Here’s a look at the pricing plans for running a recruitment campaign through Monster and Indeed:

Monster:

• $279: Starter package with one slot for a job posting, 50 resume views per month
• $399 : Standard package with three job slots, placement on partner sites for 30 days, ability to view 150 resumes per month
• $649: Premium package with five slots, placement on partner sites for 30 days, 250 resume views monthly

Indeed:

• Starts free: No charge for posting an ad on the site
• Pay per click: Pricing based on user engagement with job posts
• Total campaign cost is based on the budget you set and the amount of time you choose to advertise the job
• $100: 30 resume views per month
• $250: 100 resume views per month

FAQs

Not quite ready to pick a site to post jobs to? We’ve pulled some of the internet’s most frequently asked questions about these two job-posting sites to help make your decision a little easier.

Which is Better: Monster or Indeed?

You’re likely to find a much deeper candidate pool on Indeed, yet many employers favor Monster when it comes to finding qualified candidates who are actively in the job market. There may be more qualified candidates on Indeed, but you’ll likely have to sift through more unqualified applicants as well.

So it may come down to how much digging you’re willing to do or how many resumes you have the bandwidth to field.

Is Indeed Bigger than Monster?

Yes, Indeed attracts multitudes more web traffic than Monster. Indeed draws hundreds of millions of monthly visitors, while Monster is closer to the range of tens of millions.

Does Indeed Pull Jobs from Monster?

No, these two job boards don’t pull job listings from each other. However, they work with their partner sites to share job openings with a wider audience of job applicants.

Why is Indeed So Bad?

There is the perception among some recruiters and hiring managers that Indeed offers an inferior product to other top job sites. However, much of the negativity surrounding Indeed may be related to the site’s massive size.

Employers may find the sheer number of quality candidates generated from Indeed job listings to be overwhelming. Job applicants looking for full-time positions may also form some negative opinions about Indeed because of the large number of contract positions and entry-level jobs that help fill out the site.

Deciding Which Job Board to Use

If size were the only metric that mattered, the clear cut winner here would be Indeed. But after looking at the key features of these two job posting sites, the winner here will be unique to your organization and its needs.

And you may not find a winner here. There are still other major job boards that may suit your needs even better, such as a job board like ZipRecruiter. 

With ZipRecruiter, a job aggregator, you get the power of artificial intelligence to help you find the best-suited job candidates based on attributes such as experience, whether they have a college degree, location and more. That AI is especially helpful, considering all of the resumes you may field from a job-posting site that shares your jobs on dozens of other job boards.

So even if you’re leaning towards Monster or Indeed, posting on a site that syndicates your job postings could help you find the best candidate that much faster.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.