HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Ladders · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Ladders

7Judge labels

0First choices

5Negative labels

6 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.1, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

6 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Ladders was named 6 times in Job advertising, where JobTarget led with 21%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small businessnot named

No model named it for this buyer.

Mid-market106 of 109

under the label threshold

Enterprise63 of 70

under the label threshold

In job advertising · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Ladders for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Job advertising and distribution	Talent acquisition	0%	106 of 109	67%	6	under 10 labels · led by JobTarget at 21%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Ladders yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Ladders across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	1
Mistral Small	0	1	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0
Kimi K2	1	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative2 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative5 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative7 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

No positive label carried a quote.

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“reputation for questionable practices, including pay-to-play schemes and unverified job postings” Mistral Small · Job advertising · negative prompt · hard negative

“sites mimicking legacy platforms like TheLadders... Never pay to apply for a job” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Job advertising · negative prompt · hard negative

“Outdated or fraudulent postings, info harvesting; grouped with scams on Reddit.” Grok 4.1 Fast · Job advertising · negative prompt · hard negative

“Lensa, Bebee, and Ladders - seem to be scams” Llama 4 Maverick · Job advertising · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Ladders, over the 7 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Ladders was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Indeed6 of 73Not in the top three

ZipRecruiter6 of 70Not in the top three

LinkedIn5 of 73Not in the top three

Dice5 of 70Not in the top three

CareerBuilder4 of 70Not in the top three

Glassdoor4 of 70Not in the top three

Bebee3 of 70Not in the top three

Handshake3 of 70Not in the top three

Intch3 of 70Not in the top three

Lensa3 of 70Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Ladders. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 6 of the 7 answers that named Ladders and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

linkedin.com4

reddit.com4

bestjobsearchapps.com3

consumer.ftc.gov3

g2.com3

hrmorning.com3

money.com3

noon.ai3

firsthr.app2

ismartrecruit.com2

Thirty of the thirty domain citations in answers naming Ladders came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

hrmorning.com/articles/bad-job-boards3

linkedin.com/posts/fiona-de-villiers_ethical-give-activistsrevealcorruption-activity-742943

money.com/best-job-posting-sites-for-employers3

noon.ai/blog/articles/143-best-job-posting-sites3

reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/1qay935/sites_to_avoid_for_job_seekers3

consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams2

consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/05/scammers-are-hijacking-job-ads-heres-how-spot-fak2

firsthr.app/compare/hiring/job-boards2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Ladders

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Ladders; a claim can dispute any of them.

The Ladders 1TheLadders 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Ladders's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Ladders, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at ladders.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.