My Craigslist rant

Things that annoy me about Craigslist help wanted ads:

• The preponderance of MLM scams and phishing operations disguised as help wanted ads

If you've spent any time job hunting on Craigslist, you've come across several of these. You respond to a (usually vague) Craigslist ad and within 24 hours you get a response asking for credit card info, Social Security numbers, bank account info, etc. Then, within 2 days, you notice an influx of spam in your email account.

Or sometimes, you'll apply for an administrative job listing with a posted salary of $35,000, and the guy emails you back telling you about a Herbalife-type MLM deal.

For these reasons, I wish Craigslist would charge a nominal fee for posting help wanted ads. If the ads weren't free to run, it would eliminate 90% of this crap.

• Short, vague ads in general

I understand the need for brevity when running a newspaper ad, where you're getting charged by the line. But Craigslist is free, and your ad can be as long as you want it to be. This is an example of what I'm talking about:

Telemarketer wanted. Must have experience. Email resume and a contact phone number.

Before I spend 10 minutes crafting a cover letter, I'd like to know a few more things. What kind of a business is it? What exactly am I going to be setting appointments for? If my background is in say, selling technology in a B2B environment, and this is a job selling light bulbs to senior citizens, I'm probably not interested. What area is this and what's the pay scale like? If I live in Venice and this is an $8/hour job in Palmetto, I'm not interested.

I'm not saying the ad has to be uber-detailed, but something like:

Used tire lot in Bradenton looking for an experienced telemarketer to call on area used car lots. Pays between $8 - $10 an hour plus commission - you should be able to make $30,000 - $35,000 in salary + commission.

...would save the employer a lot of time from not having to weed-out resumes from people who would have never responded if they knew a little more about the position.

Also, many job seekers won't send resumes to ads that are extremely vague - they assume that it's just another scam attempting to harvest personal information.

• Ads that have numerous spelling/grammar errors

I understand that typos happen. But when I see ads like this:

Looking to hire a marketing and customer serviss person for my business. Youll be doing a lot of work with our customers and answring there questions, so you need to be profeshional appearance.

...I seriously wonder if you're capable of making payroll on a consistent basis.