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Literally, ever job I’ve ever held involves Craigslist in some way.

I have been reading article after article regarding job situations, and many of them have practical advice for any other job searcher.

But I’ve given up. I now know I have only but to post my resume on Craigslist, and jobs will come to me. I don’t even bother applying for the ones that are up there- for I know the deluge of responses they get from staffing companies, Nigerian scammers and overseas developers looking to sell outsourcing.

Craigslist is the only free resume repository of any meaningful size- it does not cost to put your resume out there and there is still a higher legit-to-scam ratio that you can perform a keyword search without having to wade through too many unqualified or irrelevant responses.

I can do a search on my competitors for free, post for free, and recieve responses for free. They want nothing in return, except your continued patronage to other parts of the site.

If Craigslist were to start charging for resume search, I know I wouldn’t bother putting it anywhere but monster.com- which is the second-cheapest resume search.

But now that you know, just go ahead and post it there. Unless you’re a mid-to-senior level web developer. Then it’s no good. Stay away.

Many people are now using craigslist as a viable means of recruiting for their positions, or to post their resumes. Because of this influx of traffic over the last few months, scammers are beginning to target craigslist more and more.
So you get an e-mail, from a human being no less, with the heading “Thank you for your application” or “I found your resume on craigslist”.
You get all excited and reply that you would be very interested in the position, hunger pangs or desire to pay your rent blinding your good judgment. This is the trap they want you to fall into, and now they have a coveted piece of information: your reply-to address.
What you failed to recognize were these signs and symptoms.
1. Failure to mention anything personal about you or your resume.
When someone writes an e-mail to a lot of people, they try to sound as personal as possible while not targeting an individual with any kind of identifying information, such as the industry they are in, the job they are looking for, or their name.

If the e-mail starts with the greeting “Hi” or your e-mail’s prefix (rockstarlubr92 isn’t your name is it?) then you can be sure the e-mail wasn’t written with you personally in mind. If it also fails to mention anything about your field, qualifications or the job’s minimum requirements, you can count on it being a shotgun blasted spam-o-splat all over your inbox.

2. A job offer that didn’t accompany an interview, discussion over the phone or anything else.

If you are offered a job, chances are you have given that person some reason to think you are a capable, sane, stable individual that could reasonably be expected to perform the work asked of you. People don’t start out offering a job or even touting how much money you could make. If they have to “sell” you the job, then there’s a reason- no one else has taken it. It’s either a profoundly crappy job(cold calling people or selling cutco knives) or it’s a scam to use  you/steal from you in some way.

3. A company that claims its major and international, but you’ve never heard about it before.

A company that has to tell you that it’s major and recognized is generally not major and/or recognized. Think about it. Does General Mills introduce itself to you when you apply for a job? Does AT&T? How about Bell Helecopter? While this is not entirely telling it is an element to consider, a lot of recruiting agencies start out this way- but direct-to-hire firms don’t.

4. Jobs that have a high earnings-to-hours worked ratio.

Any job that only needs you two days a week for maybe an hour or two a day isn’t an international fulfillment company. What they are doing is laundering money, and they want to use you to do it. What they will ask you to do is open an account(or use your existing account) at a bank, then they will transfer money into it, asking you to then take the money out and send it by some means(western union, etc) to Russia, Nigeria, China or another country far away from you. You might get 5-15% commission on these “deals” and then your account will be investigated for fraud, and the FBI will knock on your door. If this has already happened to you or is in the middle of happening, don’t panic. Simply explain what happened, give them the e-mails and as long as you were lied to(as in, you didn’t knowingly cooperate), the authorities will recognize the scam and you likely* won’t be charged. Just don’t expect to be able to open any accounts anytime soon.

5. Jobs that require you use your family and friends to accomplish tasks.

Sales jobs that require you to generate your own leads or “buy” leads from the company are not generally sales jobs that are going to go somewhere. What you might pay for is an exclusive territory- what you should not pay for are sales materials, product samples and qualified leads or lead lists (unless they are for an industry, not a company’s product.).

Think about this: A company WANTS to sell it’s product, it wants it so bad that is willing to spend 1/3 of it’s net expenditures in advertising on average. Hiring you as a salesperson should be a move that’s an investment that they are willing to make, and they should be willing to give you the tools to be as successful as possible. If they aren’t willing to make the investment, or hire qualified individuals to make sales, then you have run into a product that either does not exist, isn’t worth the ticket price or you, the salesperson are going to be buying more of the product than anyone else is.

So those are the largest share of craigslist fakes, but it goes with the territory. Free resume search isn’t without it’s problems, but its got the most exposure so it’s (in my opinion) worth the risk.

*I offer no guarantees that you won’t be charged, but you are a bystander in this situation, not the culprit. Please be sure to retain the services of a good lawyer!

The trouble with looking for a job in Dallas, Texas is not the amount of jobs availible or really the extreme market penetration of other professionals like you, or with more experience. There are plenty of jobs to go around.

One of the largest problems is out-of-state staffers that do not understand how large Texas is.

I live in Plano, which is just north of Downtown Dallas. This is not anywhere near San Antonio, Austin, Huston, Beaumont, Brownsville or Amarillo. Those are all more than 3 hours one way from my home, in good traffic and no highway patrol on the way down.

A lot of recruiters in India, Missori and even New Zealand want to place me in jobs that are there- asking how far of a drive it would be for me.

They then proceed to tell me they mean Houston, Texas not some other “far away” Houston in another state.

Texas is roughly twice the size of Germany. If you lived in Northern California, would you drive to a job in Southern California? No. You couldn’t do it.

Why do people insist on trying to recruit for these jobs in the wrong areas?

Database design for resume databases and for job hunting sites need to recognize this and divide Texas into distinct regions so one can search DFW and not get anything from San Antonio, and once can search Galveston and not get anything for Amarillo.

Remember, STATE is not a good search parameter, you need to add a REGION field or your results will always be shoddy and low relavance.

I recently had the fortune(good or bad?) to fill a few internships at a company I worked for. I decided to post an entry on craigslist.

I made it a pretty open-enrollment, no school requirements, no previous experience, capped at one year experience. I was looking for a few eager young marketing break-ins like I was (not that I’m not eager, young or a break-in myself.) to teach the ropes and get cheap labor out of.

Well… my post went locally viral.

I am not sure why, or how, but every community college professor and abuser of linkedin found my craigslist post and ran with it, telling everyone they knew. After about a day, HUNDREDS of local applicants e-mailed me their desperate attempts to get an internship. I had to set up e-mail filters, and was intensely grateful I had given my Google voice number instead of my personal cell.