Craiglist is a thriving online community that features online classified advertisements where anything from employment to a potential date can be found at the click of a mouse. This web site was started in 1995 by Craig Newmark in the San Francisco Bay area about local events and happenings. As the web site grew and expanded, it became incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999, all the while continuing to develop and continuing to incorporate many additional cities in the United States. The site now serves over twenty billion page views per month and is a go-to engine for job seekers, apartment searchers, and potential daters.
Choosing to look for a job on Craigslit can be a convenient decision to a job seeker. After all, a person can view a list of potential job opportunities without ever getting up off a couch and leaving the house. Browsing by multiple categories can be very handy as well jobs that range from accounting and finance to writing and web design are all organized to be accessed at any time. A Craigslist browser can limit his or her search to a specific state or a city and then farther limit the resultant job listings by their specialization or by a key word search.
Of course, with an immense popularity of Craigslist, every job posting is inevitably exposed to thousands of potential applicants, who may all want to be hired for the same job. There is a lot of competition and a job applicant may not even realize that he or she is contesting against many other people. Sitting on one’s couch and clicking on job postings and replying with vague, generic responses to each one of them will not, ultimately, get that response noticed. In an inbox filled with emails from dozens of applicants, only a few will get selected to be reviewed more thoroughly. At the end, only the ones that express a significant amount of interest will be found worthy of keeping and considering; the rest will promptly make their way into a trash bin.
To get noticed on Craigslist, an applicant needs to put in effort not only in his or her resume but also in an introductory email that is sent out as an initial inquiry to a potential employer. The email’s subject needs to be specific to the job position that an applicant is expressing interest in and the body of the email should affirm that interest and elaborate more as to why this particular job opening caught an applicant’s eye. It is not sufficient enough to send a brief, dry email that does not quickly recap the qualifications an applicant can use to stand out from the sea of other job seekers. Even if an extensive resume is included with the email, an introduction is required to peak a potential employer’s interest and convince them to open the resume attachment.
On the other hand, it is always good to be careful and not ramble on too much in the body of the email. It deters an ad poster’s attention when too many unnecessary details are mentioned in the introductory email. Real qualifications can get lost if a job applicant reveals too much of his or her life story. It is also unprofessional to complain about a previous job or unusual family situation or hardship. Being concise without appearing to have a personality of a cardboard cut out is a delicate balance; before sending out that introductory email it is useful to read it over to make sure that the text sounds interesting and engaging.
Another way to ensure that a job seeker has a good chance in being noticed and considered for a position is to be one of the first few job applicants after a job ad is posted on Craigslist. In other words, it is crucial to act fast if an applicant waits a few days, employers who advertise on Craigslist may already fill the job. An aggressive job seeker does not take any time off from his or her employment search but, instead, takes hours refreshing a page and waiting for a new opening to pop up on screen.
Craigslist is there to get a person a job, a sofa and a date. But as with any personals or sale ads, if a job posting sounds too good to be true it probably is. Some warning signs can be spotted from a mile away, or as soon as anyone clicks on a job posting. If an ad contains misspellings, is cross-posted in several different unrelated job categories, or is offering an exuberant amount of money for a relatively simple set of tasks it is probably a scam. Many of the job postings that have no requirements listed other than for an applicant to have a computer with internet access are, without a doubt, ploys to profit on a job seeker’s naivete. Finally, if a job is not even located in the same city in which the ad is posted, it is very likely that the posting is a fake. Beware of Craigslist scams, as they run rampant, but be sure not to give up as that next dream job could always be only a click away!
