In Sales Jobs in Seattle, I stated that 75 of the top 200 jobs came from Craigslist … and that there was trouble with duplicates.
Serious trouble with duplicates … not the 8% recently found on SimplyHired … but a whopping 25%+ of the top 200 sales jobs returned by Jobster were duplicates.
The source of the trouble is content from Craigslist. Of the 75 jobs provided by CL, only 22 were unique by my definition – and herein lies part of the problem – there are multiple definitions.
I use the three ‘P’s … Position, Poster, and Place … to define unique job ads. When two ads have the same job duties, the same work location, and are placed by the same person or organization, we’re talking duplicates by my definition. (Note that this assumes the ads are placed within a relatively narrow time window.)
Yet, all 75 ads from Craigslist had unique IDs; so it’s hard to say that Jobster is responsible for the duplicates. In fact, the business model used by Craigslist is biased in favor of generating the following duplicates:
Same Job – Different Dates:
Craigslist provides the most basic of search engines. So basic that results are returned only in date sequence.
The outcome is predictable. Since jobseekers do not see search results in relevance order, it is critical, especially in a competitive market, for employers to repost their ads frequently until filled. Otherwise, the ads fall far down in the list, unlikely to be seen.
Cost really isn’t a barrier to this strategy for two reasons: 1) Craigslist is free in most cities; and 2) in the few markets where CL charges for ads, they are far below market rates.
Same Job – Different Wording:
By offering free ads, CL makes it painless to experiment with multiple ad styles and different wordings for the same position. Individual employers have nothing to lose; although in aggregate, the prevalence of duplicates forces them to frequently repost their ads to remain near the top of the search results.
Same Job – Different Sites:
Despite requests by some Craigslist users, it is not possible to search across multiple cities from within CL. So if an employer wants to attract candidates from the Bay Area and Sacramento, the employer must place two ads – one on the Bay Area site and a duplicate on the Sacramento site. CL users can’t simultaneously search across both sites, so the duplicates aren’t a problem for them. But when indexed by vertical job search sites, the duplicates become very visible.
In the end, Craigslist leaves us with duplicates, duplicates and more duplicates. In all, 70% of the CL ads in this evaluation were duplicates.
Which leads us to part III – Seattle Suburbs: Dallas, Dayton, Denver and Des Moines – in the Craigslist Degrades Vertical Job Search series.
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