A time honored tradition of looking for a job used to be picking up your local paper everyday and circling want ads in the classified section.Well those days are gone thanks to Craigslist.org. Craigslist is a free to use classified website that has sections for every major city in the United States. And since employers could post want ads easily for free on Craigslist they did and stopped paying newspapers to print ads. Bad for newspapers, good for them and you.
Now anyone looking for a job can easily search for one on Craigslist. Especially useful if you are hoping to relocate since you can just use the section of Craigslist in the area you are planning on moving to. But as with most things in life “free” comes with a cost. In this case the cost has been privacy and security. But by taking a few simple steps you can safely use Craigslist to land that next job.
The first thing you want to do is sign up for a free email account using a service like Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo. I know you probably already have an email but your going to want one that you only use on Craigslist. This is because a lot of ads are posted as a way to collect emails address for spammers. This simple and free step will protect you main email account from becoming a victim of a spammer.
When you sign up for that separate email address make sure you do not include any personal information during the sign up process. When it asks for a name use random initials or a fictional character’s name. And do not use any part of your real name for the actual email address. The idea is to be completely anonymous when you first reply to a Craigslist ad.
Now that you have a separate and safe email address be careful not to include and personal information when first replying to an ad. If an ad asks for your resume simply send a nice email stating that a resume is very person and contains a lot of information that you are not willing to send to an anonymous email address. Ask the ad post to simply reply so you can get a better idea if they are legit or not. Most ads will contain an email address generated by Craigslist to protect the poster. You want to make sure that you are replying to a legitimate company before attaching a resume. You will be able to tell this because 90% of companies will have their own email addresses like “humanresources@companyname.com.” Be skeptical of addresses from free services such as Gmail and Yahoo.
If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. That is a key guideline to remember when looking for work on Craigslist. If the ad claims you’ll make a ton of money for almost no time or by working from home there is probably a catch. I wouldn’t even bother replying to those ads. A little common sense will go a long way.
I hope I have not discouraged you from using Craigslist. It can be a good place to land a job. But you have to be careful and protect yourself and your identity.
Tags: Craigslist, Job Search, Safetly Online