Hikari Beliveau

Just wondering, what kind of precautions can a job looker take when looking at job ads online?

There's a particularly promising looking ad that I found on Craigslist, however I want to make sure that this is legitimate / safe. Anyone have any comments or suggestions or things to watch out for?

Joshua Nightshade

Well if it feels sketchy, it probably is. I did a lot of job hunting through craigslist back when I was in NYC and I only came across a handful of stuff I'd term weird, none of it would've put me in any trouble though.

Save for this one listing I responded to once for a guy needing an executive assistant, but when I called it turned out what they needed was the executive in the first place, and after it became pretty clear that this company was crashing and burning and they needed someone to put their name on all the paperwork I told them no thanks and ignored further correspondence.

But frankly most of my poor job experiences came after I'd already been hired.

Joshua Nightshade

Craigslist is also community moderated, so if someone posts an ad that's a scam and a bunch of people independently discover that, they're very likely to flag the listing as unsafe which would get it pulled.

Lucifer Baphomet

Unless everyone who respomds ends up buried in a root cellar.

Then theres no feedback.

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Hikari Beliveau

Thanks for the input!
It's not really sketchy, but it just doesn't list the place that it'll be at. I notice a lot of other places tend to do the same thing though.

Joshua Nightshade

Yeah that's not uncommon. Most of them won't list any sort of information that could let someone contact them anywhere than through the listing; there's various reasons for that, either the company doesn't want to get deluged with applicants calling their main numbers or the listing was put up by a headhunting agency and they want to collect their commission.

I worked at a job once where I had to place an ad to find an employee and just the sheer number of emails I'd get within minutes of placing an ad was intimidating. That was NYC, but I doubt the Bay Area's any better. So a lot of people listing jobs don't want people to have any way to contact them other than the email listing.

Beezle Warburton

Hey, Luc, where do you want these tarps?

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Lily Joliat

craigslist in SF/Bay Area is for the most part legitimate for jobhunts much better than HotJobs and Monster. I really like it.
And the SF Chronicle online uses hotjobs which is sucks. I also used to post my resume on Craigslist, got a lot of Work From Home/MLM scheme responses but that' s what you have to weed through. If you are so inclined, check out the Bay Area museums such as SFMOMA, Asian Art Museums, Academy of Sciences, they have job listings on their websites for all kinds of positions. They always look fun and rewarding. Hope that helps.

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