Craigslist is Balls for Job Searching

As you may have gathered, I've been unemployed now for the past couple of months thanks to an economy that's less stable than a drunk walking down a steep incline (...meh). During the course of my exhaustive job hunt, I threw a few resumes, complete with cover letters, to ads posted on Craigslist. And nine times out of ten, I'm forced to realize that my time would have been better spent addressing those emails to the kitchen wall.

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I won't say that Craigslist is "littered with deception". There are legitimate jobs posted on the site, I'm sure. But when I send out a resume for a perfect-sounding opportunity and then receive the same automatic reply time after time directing me to a website that tries to sell me questionable goods and services or wants me to join those "oh-so-lucrative" (note sarcasm) internet survey panels, I am forced to just assume anything and everything job-related on Craigslist is only up there to jerk us around.

Some people say that searching for work is a full-time job in and of itself. Therefore, I should continue pressing along despite the time I waste giving some shyster another lead. But by that comparison, it would be like your boss asking for a thirty-page report, and when you walk into his office to hand it in, he promptly tosses it in the trash while asking you to buy Girl Scout Cookies. You'd throw your hands up in despair if your crushed spirit hadn't already paralyzed your arms.

There is a positive side to this though. My bullshit-sniffing ability has strengthened as a result of all this heartbreak. I can tell, from a good nautical mile, which postings are complete crap without even looking twice? Does the ad talk about how wonderful it is to work for their company without actually saying what the job is? Probably a pyramid-scheme. Does the title say "work from home"? Next! Reply to a free email account such as Gmail or Yahoo? Probably wasting precious seconds reading past the first line.

It's not always so easy to detect crap listings, however. My favorite example was a job posting that described their work environment as "fun" and decided to prove it by attaching a joke list normally found forwarded to your inbox by the last person you know who has an AOL email address. I gave it some thought before coming to the conclusion that, even if it was legit, I'm sure the company that composed the listing is clearly insane. I wouldn't put it past them to think that "forgetting" to cut a paycheck for two weeks in a row is a hilarious thing to do. Or worse - they'd probably find that lame "drunk walking down an incline" joke I cracked in the first paragraph gangbusters. And when they were done laughing at that, they'd forward to all the employees pictures of cats falling off of or into things, the last one having a caption that states "Bonuses are suspended - ROTFLOL!!!!1 But, seriously, you won't be getting a bonus this year."

Meanwhile, my job search continues. I now stick to sites dedicated solely to job searches such as Careerbuilders and Monster.com. Craigslist is still useful, but only to see if any lonely, desperate women posted pictures of themselves topless in the "Casual Encounters" section.