The Freelance Recruiting Bible: Placing Job Ads

OK tigers and tigresses. You’ve decided you’re going to employ a member of staff, you’ve managed to put aside a budgetary allowance to do so, and you even have an idea of what you want your new recruit to do. The next step in doing this is to share this hot news with the rest of the world, to ensure you have the best and brightest of the nation/your locale hammering on the door waiting to join your workforce and aspiring to pass your anti-static wristband (as it were!).

But where should you start? The reality of this depends on your budget for recruitment, on the type of job and salary (no relocation allowance for an office junior I reckon) and on the location you wish to recruit from. Some common methods and their uses are listed below:

• Using the Internet. This is good if you want to recruit for a specialist post, or if you are looking to recruit from a wide area. Internet sites are the equivalent of a global advert, but, in being so, can be costly to an advertiser, although they are normally free to job hunters. Check out www.craigslist.com for a good and up-coming free site, which works in a more local way than most web sites due to the listings method. IT forums might also have areas you can use to list your vacancies, although some will expressly forbid this. Other useful sites are :

• UK – JobCentrePlus, who will allow you to advertise a vacancy on their website at no charge.
• India – Freshersworld.com. A central source of information including some useful job links – taking the pain out of entry level candidate recruitment. Free listings. Keep your eyes peeled for it landing in a country near you!
• Australia – www.jobsearch.gov.au – allowing employers to post their jobs for free, and including a regional search for job seekers. MyCareer.com/au comes in at $187 for a 30 day website ad, and includes some neat bonus offers (e.g. Yahoo Jobs exposure).
• USA – Workfinders.net offer a free posting service.

• Shop window adverts. These can be useful if you live/work in a small town, or if you’re looking to get someone for just a few hours a week. Bear in mind the advert will only get looked at by the people that visit the shop, and have time to spare to read it!
• Advertising on your own business premises. This can help if you have people in and out of a shop or business unit, and you could even post the ad on any company car/van used for work.
• Local newspaper. Costs vary for this. With IT jobs, it’s not really the first thing that comes to mind, either for recruiters or for candidates, however, if you are looking for a non-technical bod to join your team, you may want to use this as administrative, sales and support jobs are all suitable for this type of advertising.