During the start of my career I searched out tech firms based in my city and made a list of the ones I was interested. Then I followed the vacancies pages on their website and sent speculative emails. Companies seemed to appreciate my more proactive approach and the few times I used recruiters I had bad experiences (they tried to blag me into roles I was not qualified for).

Now I’m more open to linkedin recruiters but it depends on what the company is. I’ll often try to work out what/where the vacancy is from their description so I can circumvent them.

LinkedIn has been the most effective for me, personally. I seem to have less-scammy recruiters reach out to me on LinkedIn than on other platforms. I’m in my current role that I didn’t even apply for, but got offered from a direct outreach by a recruiter, and it made the process very seamless.

I’ve used Indeed in the past, but seem to encounter a lot more scammers from India there. That could just be related to my field, though. I get more phishing attempts from Indeed than job offers.

I feel like most job aggregators pull/crawl the same listings? That said, I’ve had success with Indeed in recent transitions.

Are you in a certain field/industry? Going directly to the websites of companies you know is a good place to start.