Linkedin jobs vs Craigslist job postings... which is better?

Ironpaper is a growing agency, and we frequently have to reach out to find candidates to fill new positions as the company grows. Our preference is to handle the HR hiring process in-house, rather than hire a recruitment company. This has given us the opportunity to try out many online job boards from Linkedin to Craigslist, in our experiment for the best hiring tools.

This article is a comparison of Linkedin and Craigslist based on our personal experience in working with the two online job posting services. Our job postings focused on the fields of marketing, design, project management and web development/engineering for the NYC location only.

The cost of job posts

The price difference between the two is large. As of this posting, Linkedin allows for 30 day posts at $399 and Craigslist charges $25  for a job posting per category. For a SF Bay Area posting there is a higher listing price at $75 per job per category.

https://www.ironpaper.com/articles/linkedin-marketing-b2b-business/

Some differences between Linkedin and Craigslist job posts

Craigslist is a great, budget-conscious option. They have options for marketing/pr, web/html and management job categories. One challenge is that there are spammers (both individuals and companies) that clutter the responses. It's best to flag these wanted spammers. Craigslist is great for fast hires or local-only job postings. Linkedin, on the other hand, has far less spam but your job listing may contain many non-locals wishing to relocate. (This is especially true with NYC job postings.)

Linkedin tends to have a higher salary focus, whereas Craigslist has a greater diversity of applicants--from beginning, mid-career, senior-level to expert. The job applicants on Linkedin will trickle in over a 30 day time span. Craigslist has time-prioritization, where you will find more candidates in the first few days and replies will fade with each passing day.

 Linkedin jobs

• More expensive ($399) per listing with promotion options including PPC highlighting
• Great for reaching full-time applicants with longer-term career goals
• Less spam
• Easier to evaluate than Craigslist applications
• You will receive more quality candidates that need to relocate

Craiglist jobs

• Far less expensive ($25 per job category)
• More diversity in the type and quality of applicants
• More spam (unwanted, unrelated and businesses pitching their services)
• Non-structured email responses make comparisons more difficult
• You will receive more locally-focused applicants (outside of the spam)