People running job boards how do you get companies to post job?

I've played around with creating a few job boards (https://tntechjobs.com) was my latest.

One thing I've found is that it's easier to get a company to post a job on your site when they can clearly see traffic/applicants being directed from your site to begin with.

So, that leads you to a couple of things:

1.) The best way to prime a job board is to manually enter job posts from other sites onto your job board. Make sure you add a way for the company to see that your job board is directing traffic to their job posting. Think query params on URLs (?source=jobboardname).

2.) You'll notice that the most notable job boards are typically extensions of businesses that have an audience. Stack Overflow, Dribbble, Codepen, etc. all have audiences already, so it makes sense for them to create a job board. They have the niche community and the traffic. You need applicant traffic to your site before any company will think about posting a job on your site. Any smart company is not just going to throw money away on random job sites that have no traffic. This is why it might be smart to go create a very niche job board site (my example of tech jobs in Tennessee). It's easier to acquire applicant traffic and therefore acquire job postings from companies.

Starting my job board https://www.linuxjobs.fr I cold emailed +200 recruiters. Maybe 20 of them posted job offers (free at this time) on my job board.

I also spread the word through the french-speaking FOSS community in order to attract job seekers.

Building a community around your job board could take a long time. For me it was more a marathon than a sprint.

I've recently launched https://austechjobs.com.au here is a couple of things I have tried:

• Manually seeding jobs that send an automated email to the company with some information and a link. This email encourages them to add other positions
• Posting in #jobs channels of relevant communities and meetups

Since austechjobs if currently free I have had a pretty good response. Companies hiring generally will take any opportunity to increase the chances of getting a candidate they want.