Craigslist has built a reputation as a great resource for free and low-cost online classifieds, especially among company recruiters operating on limited budgets. But as the years go by, it’s become clear that relying on Craigslist to fill local vacancies can take more time and money than its reputation suggests. In fact, in many cases, using a traditional job board is a more profitable and profitable strategy than posting on Craigslist.

Since the site’s early days, Craigslist has offered a very easy method of posting jobs: simply select a city, then a category, open an account, and post your job. This ease of use was a breakthrough in the often complicated online recruiting space. Over time, virtually every online job board has come up with an equally easy method of posting, typically relying on e-commerce to generate revenue from each job posting.

Free was also the clear differentiation between Craigslist and most other online job sites. As he liked to explain to founder Craig Newmark, his goal was to help drive communication between visitor communities, not generate revenue. Eventually, Craigslist began charging for job postings in many marketplaces, which Newmark explained was a great way to filter out fraudulent and frivolous job postings. Newmark added that keeping the listing fee low ($25 to $75 per month depending on the city) allows Craigslist to retain its position as the low-cost provider compared to major job boards, a position that Craigslist actively promotes. Low prices also helped Craigslist cement its relationship with the demographic the site has cultivated since its inception: teens, students, and singles who have relied on the site to help them find cheap furniture, a used car, a new partner (for night or forever) and an entry-level job.

Yet 14 years after Craigslist launched, the site is losing effectiveness as a recruiting source under the weight of its own success. Job seeker traffic has grown exponentially in most Craigslist cities over the years, and the current recession has accelerated that traffic growth. At the same time, the number of job openings has decreased in many cities in parallel with the slowdown in the economy. The result, recruiters say, is that every Craigslist job posting is inundated with applications, and given the demographics of the typical Craigslist visitor, that influx of applications has created a backlog of work. Instead of receiving 30 applications for a position, of which one or two may be interview-worthy, companies of all sizes report receiving hundreds of responses within 24 hours of each posting. Yet the number of qualified candidates applying remains the same or has decreased for many positions, recruiters say, resulting in several hours spent sifting through an overload of resumes looking for the needle in the haystack.

This problem is familiar to anyone who has posted a listing of any kind on Craigslist. Since all listings are posted in reverse chronological order, the newest listings get the most prominence. When a company posts a job for a receptionist on a Tuesday at 10am, the response window starts at 10:01am, but usually ends later that day as other postings push the list of receptionists further and further back. down in the queue. While it’s true that the search results pull older listings, those results are also displayed in reverse chronological order, so the receptionist job drops below the new listings for receptionists every time another job is posted on that job. category.

The problem is compounded in marketplaces where Craigslist charges for job postings. If a service station posts a listing for a mechanic for $25 and none of the applicants in the first 24 hours are a good fit, the probability that the station will receive a relevant application during the rest of the 30-day posting is very small. . recruiters say. To update the flow of new applicants, the station must repost the job for another $25 to get the list back to the top of the list. In some cases, employers post jobs four or five times before attracting a qualified new hire. At $25 or more per post, Craigslist quickly becomes an expensive option, not to mention time-consuming given the flood of unqualified applicants, recruiters say.

Another common issue brought up by recruitment specialists is Craigslist’s lack of customer service. Once a job is posted, it’s not difficult to return to the site to make changes or remove the ad, provided you’ve saved your confirmation email. But if you need a live person to ask a question about any aspect of the Craigslist posting process, you’re usually out of luck. Craigslist communicates with its customers solely by email, and given the size of its databases compared to the very small size of its customer support team (of which Newmark himself is a member), few customers receive responses to their support requests.

There are certainly exceptions to this trend depending on the job being advertised. And employers in smaller cities say they tend to do better than their peers in medium and large markets. But for evidence of the broader trend, look no further than the comments posted each day on Craigslist’s own user forum. It’s an insightful way to look at the challenges recruiters face with the site nationally. Some examples include:

• “When I post a help wanted ad, I’m inundated with resumes from people who aren’t qualified and have to post multiple times to find a qualified candidate. If I were paying to post, I wouldn’t post here anymore.”

-A contractor company-

• “We have been trying to post job ads for several weeks now. Ads are accepted and show up in our account, but they never show up on the site. I can’t tell you how many hours we’ve spent trying to repost so the announcements. We are now at our wits end and have sent out several requests for help, but have not even received an acknowledgment.”

-A non-profit agency-

• “Paying $25 a day to find someone (yes, a day because ads are lost after the first day due to volume) is too much. We can only pay minimum wage for a dishwasher, so $175 a week to advertise is a lot.” “.

-A restaurant

Alternatives to Craigslist abound for recruiters. Sites like Oodle, Indeed, and Simply Hired offer free listings to a national audience, and the Big Three job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs) also reach national audiences at rates that vary by zip code. But recruiters often report the same problems with national general-interest sites, including a burst of response immediately after posts are published — often less geographically qualified given the national nature of these sites — and then a rapid decline by a few. few days.

Niche sites that target the job market by one or more narrow criteria, ranging from industry or function to geography and demographics, hold up more effectively. For example, job boards offered by trade magazine websites and associations tend to provide a limited and specific response from applicants to job listings targeted at that audience. In these cases, niche sites typically charge posting fees ranging from $25 for seven days to more than $500 for 30 days, but recruiters say the return on investment is good since they tend to get higher-ranking candidates. quality to check. Recruiters looking for a paralegal in San Francisco who post the position on LawJobs.com, for example, will access a niche site geared toward the legal profession, as well as the local online posting audience of the San Francisco Observer (the daily legal journal).

Recruiters also report that newspaper and television career sites with high visitor penetration in a local market remain a strong source of qualified applicants who live in that market. Most local newspapers maintain an online audience penetration of more than 40% in their markets, and often more, despite recent declines in print circulation and viewership, reports the Newspaper Association of America and the Association National Broadcasters.

The bottom line is that when recruiters consider online resources to attract candidates, the result often reflects the quality of the source. As the adage goes: you get what you pay for, both in terms of quality and the time required to identify qualified applicants.