I Love Craigslist Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you've no doubt heard of Craigslist.
The ubiquitous site is a veritable "bazaar" of activity, facilitating
the exchange/purchase of concert tickets, couches, and professional
services. Craigslist also doubles as a match making service for
roommates and singles looking for dates.
Truth be told, I've
bought and sold dozens of items on Craigslist but up until recently, I
had never used the "Jobs" section of the site. I finally took the leap
this past Tuesday and I have one word to describe the experience. Wow!
Twenty five resumes and four in-person interviews later, consider me a
believer. Did I mention that it only cost $25? That's $1/resume and
$6.25 per interview.
The ultimate benefit of using Craigslist
for recruiting is the fact that I work at a company that is focused on
building communities. What better source to recruit people from then
one that is a pioneer in the community space? Unlike using a
traditional recruiter to hire -- nothing against traditional
recruiters, they still provide tremendous value -- all of the people
that I talk to already have an understanding of what community is. That
alone saves me 10-15 minutes of interview time and ultimately a whole
lot of resumes from people that don't get community.
At the end
of the day, the thing I really love about Craigslist is that it
embodies the "community" spirit -- something eBay used to do but has
subsequently lost sight of over the years. Most of the people I
interact with on Craigslist are friendly, helpful and generally
protective of the community. Maybe that will change now that the site
is accepting dollars for job postings but given the fact that it's
nominal, I think they're doing it right.
Thu, Jan 04 2007