Will CollegeRecruiter.com help you land a great job to kick-start your career? The answer obviously will depend on many different factors, but this review will give you a basic overview and idea of what you can expect this job board to be like, so you can decide if it’s a good fit for you.
What is College Recruiter?
College Recruiter is an online job board that has been on the scene since 1996 with the goal of helping every college student and graduate find a great career.
Although the website appears to be like any other job board you have visited in the past, the company separates itself from its competitors by offering a great recruiter experience, great employment features, and a company blog designed to help college students and fresh grads improve their interviewing and resume building skills.
The additional features and services offered have contributed to College Recruiter becoming one of the leading sites for stressed out college students to check out when college ends, and the real world begins.
Who is using it?
The website has 7 million grads and 10 million students signed up. Out of these numbers, the site claims to have 5 million active resumes and 120 million in their targeted email database.
The company has also received 35,000 sign ups from employers seeking to hire the best talent exiting the doors of college campuses across the country. The majority of these 35,000 employers consist of Fortune 1000 companies and federal government agencies.
Some of the most well-known companies include KPMG, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Uber, and Enterprise.
How does it work?
One of the things that will strike you right away is how easy it is to use College Recruiter to find jobs. Unlike other job boards, it doesn’t waste valuable space on the home page with irrelevant features or topics. Instead, it understands that college students are only interested in jobs – thus, the company makes it easy to find jobs by eliminating everything, but only keeping a larger than life sized search bar on its front page.
The company also doesn’t waste your time by having you sign up to use their service– instead, you are free to browse and apply to jobs without creating an account on College Recruiter. Now keep in mind, it’s better to register with the company and create a free account so you can upload your resume and have a more efficient experience while using the website. But it’s not mandatory for students and graduates to register – it’s left entirely up to you (note: there have been some reports of spam so you may not want to register, but more on that later).
For your first few visits, I recommend browsing through the job boards in search of opportunities which peak your interest.
Simply enter your job title/keyboard followed by your city and state.
From there you will be presented with a pop-up, similar to the one below.
I recommend not entering your email address and scheduling alerts during your initial few searches. Instead, close the pop-up and spend some time going through the list of jobs. You can click on each job, and check out the job description, employer, date posted, and whether it’s a full time or part time position. From there, you can access the “apply” button which you can use to fill out your application on the employer’s website.
Tip: When you are browsing through the list of jobs, look out for the Glassdoor average salary information on the left-hand corner (see below). The Glassdoor data tells you what the average worker in the industry from your area is earning. You can then use this information to compare the average salary of your position to the salaries offered by the employers using College Recruiter.
What jobs are offered?
Considering the fact that College Recruiter is a small scale business, I was surprised to see that the site has a large number of entry-level and internship job postings.
After running a few search queries, I found well over 250,000 positions available.
This is pretty astonishing considering the number of employers signed up for the service is very few compared to the larger online job boards.
After searching for jobs in my area, I found mostly entry level accounting and nursing jobs.
Overall, the screen shot below lists in order the top internships and entry-level jobs available.
What makes College Recruiter stand out?
From my initial impression, I believed College Recruiter was going to be a knock off version of the huge job boards we all know, however after diving in further – I actually found the opposite to be true.
College Recruiter isn’t all hype like most of the job boards you are likely to come across – instead, the company has won the highly sought after Weddie’s User Choice Award for the best job boards from the years 2007 to 2014.
Alongside the Weddie’s Award, the website was also rated as one of the best sites for college students to check out by numerous news outlets.
The success of the website is due to it helping roughly 2 million recent grads and students find entry-level jobs or internships each year. Considering the small scale operation and the high success rate, the company is definitely doing something right.
Despite the success, however, every website comes with a list of complaints and this company is no exception.
The 3 Major Issues with College Recruiter…
1. The website has no way to filter your searches – this makes the overall process of finding a job very frustrating and annoying.
After I searched for accounting jobs in New York – I was presented with a list of 1025 jobs (shown below).
Considering there is no way to filter these jobs according to most recent, highest salary, date posted, or job title – I would have to manually go through each and every posting (103 pages to be exact) in order to find jobs meeting my requirements. This is very annoying and tedious because you could be wasting time going through a bunch of jobs that aren’t a good fit. Or worse – jobs that are outdated and inactive.
2. Users have received spam from College Recruiter. Some users have stated that the company shares your personal information with third parties, resulting in promotional emails reaching your inbox.
I signed up to put this claim to the test, however, I’ve yet to receive any form of promotional material from the company (keep in mind, I’ve only been a member for three days). From what I can tell – the company may share your personal information with its partners, leading to you receiving promotional offers that may or may not be of interest to you. I wouldn’t necessarily label this as spam – however, if you want to sign up with the company, I would recommend using a secondary email.
3. It’s very time consuming to find positions you like.
After searching for a job, you will be presented with tons of jobs. Unfortunately – there is no way for you to go through these positions without having to manually check each and every posting. The website does a horrible job at telling you what the posted job is about. You have to click on the job, and be redirected to another page before you can read up on the job description. This is a clearly a great hassle because it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack – the process isn’t user-friendly at all. You will need to spend an entire afternoon or evening narrowing down the long list of jobs.
Despite the three issues listed above, College Recruiter does 3 things really well…
1. Gives students full access to tons of valuable employment-related content.
The free value offered by the company is very impressive – it provides students with tons of helpful articles, videos, salary calculators, and lists of best places to work. The hidden gems found in these resources can give you the edge you need to stand out from the rest of the crowd. After searching through the resources, I found very valuable pieces of content related to finding your first job and what to look for in potential employers. These resource guides are very comprehensive and useful for the average student coming out of college.
2. Free resume critique.
The website claims to provide every registered student with a free resume critique and so I decided to sign up with College Recruiter to put their free resume critique to the test. After signing up and uploading my resume, I ticked the little box asking for a top resume expert to review my resume (see below). The company stated that within three business days, I would receive an email containing written, specific suggested changes that are designed to make my resume as appealing as possible. After the three days were up, I checked back in and found an email from a top resume expert, providing me with very actionable tips designed to improve my resume. I was impressed, this was in fact the real deal. The value offered through this free resume critique is second to none, and one every college student or graduate needs to take full advantage of immediately.
3. Alerts you the moment new job titles are posted.
After providing your email to the company – College Recruiter will email you with job alerts every time a new position is posted. This is a great way for you to keep track of new job postings and career opportunities.
Would I recommend College Recruiter?
I would definitely recommend this search site to college students and graduates. It makes the overall experience easy and efficient, without hassling you with all the unnecessary chaos that comes from other job boards. In addition, the website has a proven track record.
Despite the complaints and the lack of advanced search options, the service is truly exceptional and one that cannot be ignored on your path to landing your first job after graduation.
Additional job sites to check out:
USA Jobs (government jobs)
If anyone has used College Recruiter before, feel free to tell us your experience within the comments section!
I love your review about the College Recruiter. I did not know that there is a website like this that exists and can help people who are currently having hard times looking for their job. Your review gave me an idea about searching for jobs in the future. Even this website has flaws or issues such as receiving spams or taking so much of your time just to get or find the best job suited for your skills, it has interesting features that the other online job board did not have. I am very interested in free resume criticizing that can help me improve my resume. And in that way, my resume will look more catchy in the eyes of big companies. I am looking forward in using this website to help me in my future career. Thank you for your review.
Thank you for your mostly positive and entirely fair review of College Recruiter. I’m the founder and one of the owners.
Your criticism of our search was spot on. Even though we had not read your review until after completing the development project, we added “facets” to our search results pages. What does that mean? When you search for something like sales in Houston, you’re going to get hundreds and perhaps thousands of results. That’s way, way too many for a typical job seeker to properly wade through. But now along the left side of the search results are some links that help you drill down. Maybe you only want to see the sales positions with certain organizations or in certain suburbs or with certain job titles. The facets allow you to do so with ease.
Again, we appreciate your review. Keep up the great work!!