This article compares two branching schemes for the parallel machine scheduling problem with release dates and tails. Both branching schemes can be used for either complete or incomplete search tree based algorithms. In particular, our study aims to prove the robustness of each of them for several search methods. We experimentally compare the efficiency of the two branching schemes when they are used in a branch-and-bound (BnB) method, in a limited discrepancy search, in a branch-and-greed (BnG) method or in a beam search (BS).