Best Job Boards for Hiring a Childcare Center Director (2026)

A director search does not look like a teacher search, and the boards below reach director-level candidates in different ways.

Ranked for this specific hire:

• NAEYC Early Childhood Career Center — the early-childhood field's association job board, and the one option here with resume search built into every posting package.
• LinkedIn — a promoted, pay-per-click post on a general professional network. That matters more for a director hire than for classroom roles.
• ChildcareHires — the childcare-only board: a director opening sits on its childcare-director role page and an assistant-director opening on the assistant-director page, with a Featured option for a hard-to-fill post.
• Child Care Aware of America's Career Center — postings plus Job Flash email packages that send the job to child care professionals.
• Indeed — the general-audience fallback: many postings run free, and you screen the mixed pile of applications.
• State and city job banks — free local lists such as Delaware's licensing-office openings page and New York City's Early Childhood Career Center.
• ChildCare Careers — not a job board: a staffing firm that places pre-screened site directors when you would rather buy the hire than run the search.

A practical shape for the search: post on the childcare-specific boards, add one sourcing channel (resume search or a promoted post), and take the free local visibility where it exists. Our hiring guide to childcare directors covers the recruiting and screening side in depth.

NAEYC Early Childhood Career Center. A single 30-day posting costs $195 for NAEYC members and $220 for non-members.

Every posting package includes resume search access, postings can be used within 1 year, and optional add-ons start at $100 for Featured Jobs and $150 for Targeted Job Distribution.

LinkedIn. The posting itself can be free; promotion is where the money goes.

Promoted posts are pay-per-click — "you only pay for clicks in the country in which the job is posted" — billed against a daily average budget (the post runs until you close it or up to 6 months, then closes automatically) or a total budget (it pauses once the total is spent, and paused jobs are not visible to job seekers).

A first-time promoter may get a free trial, subject to job posting limits and not available to everyone.

Close the post before the trial ends, or LinkedIn charges the recommended daily or total budget.

ChildcareHires. A Standard post is $199 and a Featured post is $399 at launch pricing (regular prices $299 and $499) — each a one-time payment that runs 30 days and never renews.

Slot plans ($899 a month for up to 10 live posts, or $1,749 for up to 25 with Featured placement on every post) suit centers that hire constantly.

The pricing page has the details, and you can post a director opening directly.

Child Care Aware of America's Career Center. A 30-day posting costs $199.

Job Flash packages email the posting to "Qualified Child Care Professionals": $299 (Job Flash), $399 (Premium — stays high in search results and is highlighted) and $599 (Ultimate — adds distribution across a "Network of 1,000+ Sites").

A single resume purchase is $35, and CCAoA members post basic 30-day listings free.

Indeed. Many jobs can be posted for free, subject to Indeed's terms, conditions, quality standards and usage limits; some jobs (for example, ones aggregated from a career site or company website, or published from an applicant tracking system) are sponsored-only.

There is no fixed sponsored price — the Standard price is generated by Indeed's recommendation system, with a minimum shown on the sponsorship page — and the Standard plan has no long-term contracts.

State and city job banks. Delaware's Office of Child Care Licensing lists openings from licensed facilities as a courtesy (postings from the last 4 weeks, with position, full- or part-time status, salary and contact details), and New York City's Early Childhood Career Center lets employers post at no cost.

Delaware notes that it does not specifically endorse or recommend the organizations it lists.

The NAEYC career center is the clearest sourcing play: employer accounts can search a resume database filtered by key criteria, and that access comes with every posting package rather than being sold separately.

Child Care Aware sells resume access separately — $35 buys a single resume.

LinkedIn works differently: promoting a post pays for clicks rather than resume access, so the post can draw interest from well beyond the childcare-only boards.

For a director hire, that is a better trade than for an assistant role.

ChildcareHires sits at the posting end, and it says so plainly: there is no résumé database and no candidate profiles.

People who click Apply go to the center's own application page or inbox, and ChildcareHires never sees or stores what they send.

ChildCare Careers is the fully outsourced version of sourcing: the firm provides pre-screened teachers, assistant teachers and site directors, placed on short-term, long-term or permanent bases.

Indeed lets many jobs go up free, subject to its terms, conditions, quality standards and usage limits — and some jobs are sponsored-only.

LinkedIn has a free, non-promoted posting, plus a free trial to promote a first job (subject to job posting limits and not available to all posters).

Close the post before the trial ends or you are charged at the recommended budget.

Child Care Aware of America members can post basic 30-day listings free; non-members start at $199.

The public channels are free outright.

New York City's Early Childhood Career Center costs employers nothing to post, and Delaware's licensing office lists openings from licensed facilities as a courtesy.

Those are the two we checked — if your state or city runs something similar, ask your state child care licensing office.

A job board advertises the opening and hands you the applicants; an agency supplies the person.

ChildCare Careers provides pre-screened teachers, assistant teachers and site directors to centers, preschools and before/after-school programs, with substitutes available on demand and short-term, long-term and permanent placements.

That route fits when the director's chair cannot sit empty — an interim placement can hold it while the permanent search runs — or when you would rather pay for screening and placement than run the interviews yourself.

Its fees are not published on the pages we checked; you contact the firm for terms.

Boards and agencies are complements, not substitutes.

A board does the opposite of an agency: ChildcareHires, for one, is not a staffing or recruiting agency and does not screen, interview or vouch for candidates — it publishes the posting and sends applicants to the center. Our guide to childcare staffing agencies covers how agency arrangements work.

This ranking is built for one job: filling a childcare center director or assistant director opening.

We checked every published price and term on each company's own website in October 2026, and the comparison weighs what matters for this hire — sourcing tools, the audience a posting reaches, published cost, and the commitment you take on.

The ranking is a fit judgment, not a rating: there are no scores, stars or review counts on this page.

Prices are each company's own published prices and can change, and ChildcareHires' are launch prices that can end without notice.

Every fact about a competitor was checked on that company's own website; ChildcareHires' facts come from its fact sheet.

Confirm the current price on each company's pricing page before you budget the search.