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For decades, the newspaper classified ads were one of the most important sources of leads for most job seekers. With ink-stained fingers, pens, and paper, job seekers in the past poured over the daily or weekly newspaper’s Help Wanted classified section, noted the promising opportunities, and followed up with telephone or typewriter. Not so much, now…
Traditional "Help Wanted" Classifieds – Online
These days, many newspapers have put those Help Wanted ads on their Websites. For the Web, these are usually unique listings, specific to the location. Local businesses like dentists’ or doctors’ offices, car dealers, and apartment complexes that have always advertised in the Help Wanted are still advertising there but reaching a smaller audience. Often, those are the only places you will find those particular job postings online.
Sometimes the ads are presented as un-searchable images, organized into the traditional classifieds categories – perfect duplicates of the printed paper. Sometimes the printed classifieds are converted into searchable text.
For example, Inland Southern California’s The Business Press publishes their print classifieds on their Website, as searchable text, and enhances the description in the online version.
Sadly, the number of those “classic” classifieds actually being published online seems to be declining.
Pseudo Classifieds
Many newspapers, including the largest, adapted to the new competition from large job sites by outsourcing the “Jobs” portion of their Website to those same employment super sites like CareerBuilder, HotJobs, and Monster. Essentially they provide a window into the existing database, quite disconnected from the “real” Help Wanted ads appearing in the printed editions of the paper. Initially, perhaps, the rationale was to retain the value of the printed ad, which was only available to those who purchased the printed edition of the newspaper.
NEW Online Classifieds
Instead of publishing traditional classifieds online, these classifieds usually appear only in their online form, and they are a rapidly expanding force in the online job search marketplace.
The most obvious of them is Craigslist.org, an enormously popular – and growing – online marketplace for 450 cities worldwide, based in San Francisco. With the exception of the major markets of San Francisco, Boston, LA, San Diego, NYC, D.C., and Seattle, posting a job on Craigslist is free. Postings appear by date in reverse-chronological order, with the newest at the top (however briefly), and can be formatted in either plain text or HTML. Over 750,000 jobs are posted on Craigslist sites each month.
Because most listings are posted for free, some “junk” is posted in many cities, but Craigslist is also self-policing through several “community moderation” methods. More than 15% of all Craigslist postings are removed as a result of community input. Some cities appear to be more tolerant than others, so each Craigslist city/site demonstrates its own unique personality. See Job-Hunt’s Guide to Using Craigslist to Find a Job for more information.
Because Craigslist is so successful, other Craigslist wanna-be’s are appearing every day, usually just emulating what Craigslist already does so well and so inexpensively.
Next: Using Job Aggregators
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About the author...
Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff "graduate" who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg.
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