Job boards for PHP developers - craigslist.org
June 19, 2008
Craigslist isn’t just one site, or it is, depending on how you look at it. Craigslist offers (usually) free classified listings, and has geographically targetted sites aimed at most major metro areas in the US and around the world. Most city sites have 3 categories where PHP jobs would be listed “Software/QA/DBA/etc”, “Web/HTML/Info design and “Internet Engineering”. While it’s a valiant effort, it’s not a distinction that many employers can make, and so many general “web” positions get placed in one or more of these without too much consideration for the finer distinctions between “Software development” and “Internet engineering”. 
The Craigslist value is one that I’d initially dismissed a few years back. *Most* positions were freelance only, or with much smaller companies that were simply looking to save the cost of putting an ad on monster.com. That doesn’t seem to be the case today as much. In some markets, Craigslist charges to put up an ad, but it’s cheaper than competing services. In many markets, it’s still 100% free to post Craigslist job ads. A side-effect of this is that there’s more recruiters using Craigslist than other sites. Not a bad thing, but something to be aware of.
Another weird aspect of CL is that anonymity it affords the poster. Almost every poster chooses to have their email address anonymized, so when you reply, you’re replying to a completely unknown entity. If the poster doesn’t put the company name in the post, you’re almost applying blind. It’s an odd position to be in. It’s hard enough to write an intelligent response to someone’s post when you don’t know the company.
Compounding the problem further, some people just can’t write. I believe monster, for example, will have people help you write your ad, so your money isn’t completely wasted. No such hand-holding on Craigslist. There’s more than a fair share of job listings which look like they’ve been written by a fifth grader, and sifting through the junk postings (even those that were well-intentioned) takes more time on Craigslist than it does on other sites.
But it’s not all bad! I’ve actually found posters on Craigslist to typically be more responsive. Well, I might just be measuring the ones that responded! I typically use a tracking URL to my resume so I can tell when each recipient visits my resume site (or if they do). Usually I have a view the same day, sometimes the same hour. I haven’t seen that level of consistency on other sites. Bear in mind, though, I’m primarily just dealing with the Raleigh, NC Craigslist - your experiences will likely vary greatly based on the market you’re in.
Craigslist offers RSS feeds of your search results, so keeping up with new postings can be pretty easy. It’s also pretty easy to write your own spider to search and find what you’re looking for on Craigslist. I’ve written one before, and may republish it here if I get time (and/or if there’s any demand!)
What’s your experience with using Craigslist for job hunting?
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