Posting your jobs to Craigslist may seem difficult and unrewarding, but there are a few things you can do to get reasonable results. In order to improve our own services, we extensively tested posts on Craigslist to learn how to get the best response. Here’s how to get the most out of your Craigslist job posting.
We found it’s important to apply a bit of strategy to job titles, the use of imagery, and how many jobs you post in one ad. We also learned a lot about what time of day to post on Craigslist to avoid having your listing buried.
#1 – What Should I Write In My Craigslist Job Posting?
Enticing the job seeker into the post has a lot to do with getting in front of their EYES. This means optimizing your headline and text in order to reach those who are searching for your job.
So if you have a job for a “grill cook” or a “sushi chef” those words need to make it into your ad title and text. Pretty simple until you realize that there might be another word for that job position that is more popular than you think.
A nice example in the above data we gathered from our own search data: “Executive Chef” is a far more popular keyword than “chef” by itself. This took us by surprise and we increased our visits by including this keyword in our posts.
It can be difficult to pull this data on your own, but note that including as many versions of the name of your position is the best practice. Need a line cook? Make sure to include saute, prep, pantry, grill, hot line, cold line, broil and garde manger if they apply. This will get your Craigslist job posting more exposure, and get you more relevant resumes.
#2 – Is It Worth Putting Images In My Craigslist Job Posting?
One of the earliest tests we did was whether or not to put images in the job post of the restaurant or facility. First off, these images took time, and we wanted to know if it was worth the time to place them in.
Starting with just the logo of the company, then moving to richer posts with shots of the inside of the building, we raise the conversion rate 32%. After experimenting we quickly found that there was a sweet spot, but basically the more images you place and the better looking those images are, the more resumes we got per post.
#3 – Should I Put Multiple Job Positions in My Craigslist Ad?
This one is a bit precarious because if you post multiple jobs in a post – you’re breaking Craigslist’s rules… and this can actually get you banned from posting on Craigslist (you’d have to do it a lot but it can happen).
Visits from Craigslist posts with multiple links to jobs does net you out a lot more visits, but the conversion rate of those visits is HALF what it would be if it was a solo post.
This test consisted of over 50 posts, and through it we ended up with 3000 resumes. 1900 from the multi-job posts, and 1400 from the solos… so the high conversion rate really makes up for the lack of visits.
#4 – When Should I Post My Job on Craigslist?
Unless you’re in a pretty rural area, your ad can get buried in a matter of hours… and if you’re in a place like NYC or Chicago, it can take minutes. So when can you post to get the most eyeballs to your job ad?
Above you can see that Monday – Thursday are pretty much the same. Job searches peak between 11am and noon. Some of those peaks last hours like on Monday and Tuesday, but the later in the week you get, the shorter the job search time is. By Friday afternoon, most job seekers have decided to take the weekend off and start again on Monday.
#5 – Why don’t you let Poached Jobs do the work for you.
While Craigslist is seen as an industry standard, it requires a lot of work to get worthwhile results. Another option is Poached. We’ve created an easy way to post your jobs and optimize them to attract the most candidates.
Your posting form includes a job title field, so you can make your listing easy to find – and not only on Poached, but on Indeed, ZipRecruiter or even Google. We make adding an image or logo as simple as uploading it just once and then saving it for your subsequent posts. Much like we observed on Craigslist, we see better application numbers for solo job posts over posts that include multiple positions.
Finally, due to our high level of visibility across the web, you can post on your schedule – not Craigslist’s. Try Poached today and find your next great hire!