Recruiting: BP vs Craigslist vs Monster

[Vikram C.]

As you guys know, I am looking for an operations person to manage my rehabs as an independent contractor. I had started a different thread on the subject and was asked to narrate my experience with different sites for purposes of comparison. Here's a summary of what I have found so far:

1. BP. Posting was free. I got half-a-dozen or so responses within an hour of posting. And then I get a new response pretty much any time someone posts again to my thread and brings it to the top. I don't have exact numbers, but probably about a dozen BP members have contacted me so far. One good thing about them is that I know that they are genuinely interested in RE. And since I get some satisfaction from "teaching" in addition to getting work done, I like the idea of a potential RE entrepreneur working for me instead of just someone who wants some money. The BP members are also easier to evaluate remotely because I can check out their previous posts and get a better feel for their experience, attitude, etc. The quality of the BP candidates so far has been all over the place, with some exceptional candidates and a few who do seem to have more enthusiasm than experience.

2. Craiglist. $75 for 3 categories. I have got over 200 responses in the first day. I have not had time to read all of them but the quality of the applicants has been phenomenal. I can think of many of the applicants as potentially senior executives. The one problem with CL, so far, is that new applications are coming faster than I am able to read them so I am ending up with a bigger and bigger backlog of emails to read. I hope it will slow down soon.

3. Monster. $655. A little over 50 applications so far. About half are completely useless and really not related to my requirements at all. A few are from various parts of the country and I am not eager to hire any non-BP member from out of town. The remaining applicants have been pretty good though.

Overall, about 300 applicants so far for this one position. I will likely hire one more person sometime next year, so I will keep the best candidates on file even if I do not hire them.

The only concern right now for me is that I want to evaluate each applicant properly and that is going to take some time. In an economy like this, I think people deserve to have their applications evaluated seriously. I am glad I am out of the country right now because it allows me to focus on this effort.

[Vikram C.]

Yeah, I am also quite surprised by the quality of the CL responders. Brian Levredge was right about this - there seem to be a lot of very talented people in this part of the country who are out of a job.

Bryan H, I had CL anonymize my email address. Will that still subject me to more responses from these other sites? I think I have enough qualified people now to stop the whole thing at this point.

BTW, I have suffered worse deluges of applicants. I moved my call center from the SF Bay Area to India a long time back in a previous business. I was used to ten to fifteen applicants responding to an ad in California and was totally unprepared when about 1,200 applicants showed up in response to my first ad in Bangalore. There was a line out the door and into the streets. (After that, we always rented large conference centers in hotels when we placed help wanted ads and also had a screening test that people had to pass before they could qualify to be interviewed.)