Job boards

Two places find most openings: the career pages of the companies you want, and LinkedIn search with an alert set for each title. Apply on the company's site every time. Handshake is worth a weekly look while you are a student, and USAJOBS is the largest site for federal work. The rest of the boards, the IEEE Job Site included, cost more time than they return at the entry level.

Where a listing comes from

Three boxes. One, the employer posted it: company career pages, Handshake, USAJOBS, and the IEEE Job Site. The employer posts these, but only the career page is sure to close with the role. Two, posted and copied: LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed mix direct posts with listings they index, and a copy can outlive the role. Three, a copy: scraped lists such as the Simplify repos, staffing agencies, and boards that repost. Good for finding, but apply at the source.

1. The employer posted it

   Company career pages, Handshake, USAJOBS, the IEEE Job Site.

   Posted by the employer. Only the career page is sure to close with the role.

2. Posted and copied

   LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed mix direct posts with listings they index.

   A copy can outlive the role.

3. A copy

   Scraped lists such as the Simplify repos, staffing agencies, and boards that repost.

   Good for finding. Apply at the source.

The further a listing sits from the employer, the more likely it is stale. Find the role anywhere, then confirm it and apply on the employer's own page.

Start with the company's own page

The posting lives there, so it closes when the role closes, and the application goes into the employer's own system instead of a copy. Pick the companies you want, bookmark their career pages, and check them once a week. Many of them run on an applicant tracking system (software that collects and sorts applications), such as Greenhouse, Workday, or Lever. Greenhouse says most recruiters review applications in the order they arrive (opens in a new tab), so an early application on the company's site beats a late one anywhere else. To build the list, start from the company list page, which is built from company-lists (opens in a new tab) and covers metros in Colorado, Texas, California, and Northern Virginia.

A scraper that watches those career pages and flags each new role goes one step further. The AI use page covers it.

Use LinkedIn to find, not to apply

Search LinkedIn Jobs (opens in a new tab) by title and metro area, and set an alert for each title you want. Then open the employer's page and apply there. Search the titles employers use, which electrical engineering on O*NET (opens in a new tab) lists. Postings often say test engineer, design engineer, or controls engineer, and embedded and firmware roles are good targets for an EE. Skip the one-click apply. Semafor reported in June 2025 that applications on LinkedIn were up 45 percent in a year, at about 11,000 a minute (opens in a new tab), and the easy-apply pile is where that volume lands.

LinkedIn mixes postings employers put there with postings it indexes from elsewhere, so a listing can stay up after the role fills. The company page tells you whether it is still open.

Handshake while you are a student

Handshake (opens in a new tab) holds the listings employers post for your school, the fair schedule, and the on-campus interview slots. It is the only board where the employer chose your school. It is also crowded. In the year to spring 2025, Handshake postings fell 15 percent and applications per job rose 30 percent, by Handshake's own count (opens in a new tab). A recruiter message on Handshake is usually an automated invitation to apply, not an interview offer.

Curated lists for the daily check

SimplifyJobs keeps a GitHub list of new-grad roles (opens in a new tab). On November 9, 2026, it listed 601 roles, 119 of them under hardware engineering, and it marks closed roles with a lock. Its internship list (opens in a new tab) listed 1,612 roles, 282 of them hardware, and its scraper checks company pages every hour. These lists are copies, but fresh ones, and the closed marker is the feature the big boards lack. The resources page lists them with the other repos.

Federal work

USAJOBS (opens in a new tab) is the largest site for federal jobs, with a close date on every announcement. The job overview on each posting says who can apply. If you are not in one of those hiring groups, the agency rejects your application (opens in a new tab). NASA's OSTEM internships take applications through NASA STEM Gateway (opens in a new tab). The Pathways Internship Program (opens in a new tab) offers paid student roles. The Pathways Recent Graduates Program (opens in a new tab) takes people within two years of a degree and offers one to two years of development in an agency, and conversion to a permanent job is not guaranteed (opens in a new tab). Pathways hiring in 2026 ran well below 2024 (opens in a new tab), so treat it as one channel among several.

Boards that waste your time

• The IEEE Job Site (opens in a new tab) leans senior and academic, and it sells resume reviews and coaching. A student searching for entry-level titles finds little. Membership in IEEE is worth it for other reasons, which the professional societies page covers.
• Indeed (opens in a new tab) indexes postings from elsewhere as well as hosting direct posts, as its own employer pages say (opens in a new tab), so a copy can outlive the role. Anything you find there, confirm on the company page.
• Staffing agencies such as Actalent and Aerotek post their clients' openings under their own name, often without naming the client, so the same role shows up several times across boards. One new graduate did get a job through an agency that works with engineering companies (opens in a new tab), with the call 2 days after sending a resume. Ask who the client is before you interview.
• Tools that apply for you. Never let one submit applications in your name. The Tools that apply for you section on the getting hired page has what happened to the people who did.

How many postings are real

Greenhouse told Axios in September 2024 that 18.9 percent of the jobs posted on its platform in the second quarter of 2024 were ghost jobs (opens in a new tab). Those are postings on the employer's own system. A site that copies listings can keep a filled role up longer, so expect more stale posts there. In a May 2024 survey of 1,641 hiring managers commissioned by Resume Builder, which sells a resume tool, 40 percent said their company had posted a fake job in the past year (opens in a new tab).

The posting can be real and still not entry level. A LinkedIn analysis of close to 4 million postings found that 35 percent of entry-level openings asked for years of prior experience (opens in a new tab). The Test or technician roles section on the hardware page has the titles to search instead.

Some postings are scams. The FTC reported more than $220 million in job-scam losses in the first six months of 2024 (opens in a new tab). A real employer never asks you to pay, to buy equipment, or to send a tax form before an offer letter.

What students report

The numbers students post are low on every board. One ECE student about to graduate had a handful of interviews after more than 100 applications (opens in a new tab), and a commenter put that at a 2 to 3 percent response rate. Another sent about 280 applications and got one interview (opens in a new tab), then passed 400 applications with the interview count still at one (opens in a new tab).

The channels students credit with interviews are the ones where a person is attached. One EE alumnus who looked in aerospace and defense wrote that six recruiter contacts over LinkedIn and email led to offers in three cases (opens in a new tab). If a board brings nothing after about 20 applications, reevaluate the channel and keep going. The When online applications go quiet section on the getting hired page has the rule.

Pay data for an offer

A board shows the posting, and the pay sites show what the role is worth. The pay section on the resources page covers the BLS, Levels.fyi, and NACE, and the Evaluating an offer section on the first full-time role page walks through the comparison.