Everyone loves Craigslist, right? You can find pretty much anything on there, from an apartment to a pet sitter to the perfect mod couch. And candidates – you can definitely find candidates for your job openings on Craigslist. For a lot of us, Craigslist is probably the most immediate source of candidates. For certain roles, it might be the only source of candidates. Craigslist is great because everyone’s on there, but once you post a job and start to filter your Craigslist candidates is when the real work begins. It’s so easy to spend countless hours weeding through all the emails to find those certain folks that you actually want to talk to.
Here are five steps to reduce the noise and cut back your filtering work to an extreme degree:
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Create your opening on Trakstar Hire
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After writing the job description for your opening on Hire, you will be prompted to send it to a job board of your choice (for free). Click on ‘Add a Job Board’
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Add Craigslist as a board, and you will be given a link. Include this link in your Craigslist job description. Candidates need to apply through this link; candidates who reply directly to the add won’t make it to the applicant tracking system
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Next, within Hire, you will have the option to customize the form that candidates fill out. You can keep it short and sweet, but you’ll definitely want to include a few questions to help you weed out the disinterested candidates. Asking for a cover letter and about why the role is appealing are good places to start
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Once the applications flow into Hire, you will be able to easily filter based on candidates’ responses
Reviewing Craigslist applications that go to your email is a time suck, and candidate organization can be difficult. The steps above will help you filter candidates more quickly, and keep you organized to boot. You’ll get a good handle on who you need to speak with now, and your applicants will remain organized and searchable should future opportunities arise, too.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Trakstar.com. In April 2023, Mitratech acquired Trakstar, a leading provider of performance management, talent acquisition, and workforce analytics solutions. The content has since been updated to reflect Mitratech’s broader commitment to supporting the entire employee lifecycle — from recruitment and onboarding to learning and development — as well as the integration of HR compliance best practices across our growing Human Resources portfolio.
