gumtree or local paper for small co job ad?

marco501

I've heard a bit about Gumtree, but have had no experience of it, so wonder if anybody can help.

Basically, we're a very small firm looking to find a local salesperson, who will probably be self employed on commission.

I note that Gumtree charges around 25 pounds, but it seems to me to be geared to larger organisations.

Would a local newspaper ad - though probably dearer, be a better bet to receive the better response?

OldGreyFox

You can normally post a free ad in the Sales and Marketing section of Gumtree for the town/area job is in.

What the response will be like i dont know.

smallbiznews

Also it depends where you are in the country/world - if in London/Birmingham/Manchester etc you should get a decent response from local residents - if you're out in the sticks you have a smaller pool of potential applicants, so a national ad (gumtree) might not work so well.

Have you looked at specialist trade press or things like jobsite, monster etc?

Savvy_Sue

I've posted jobs for free on Gumtree, you can pay if you want them to stay on the 'front page' a bit longer, but we haven't bothered with that. Not sure if it's the same in all areas / lines of work.

Response hasn't been huge, but it's in the field of childcare, and there are quite a few job ads of that sort there already.

TBH, the costs of even a lineage ad in our local paper are so much higher than that, that I'd have thought you had nothing to lose by using Gumtree as well!

the trick is working out where people will look for the kind of jobs you are offering. We're a charity, and we use a lot of volunteers as well as our paid staff, so the obvious and most cost-effective place for us to advertise is on the local voluntary service council's website. But we also advertise in The Big Issue, again because that's where people look for if they're after the kind of work we're offering.

Last time we did a big recruit, we paid for more online advertising than usual. Didn't find that cost-effective - lots more enquiries, but not many more solid applications, and quite a few 'time-wasters', ie enquiries from overseas hoping we will help facilitate an entry visa to the UK when we call them for interview.

We always ask people where they saw our adverts: it may not help you this time, but next time you should know where people are looking. And think where YOU would look if you wanted that kind of work - shop windows, job centre, local paper, free paper, Metro etc etc etc

OldGreyFox

It seems they charge in London but other places its Free.

cril01

You can advertise with Job Centre Plus online for free. It takes just a few minutes of your time to post. We advertised just recently for room attendant/cleaners and were so overwhelmed with response we had to remove the advert after just 24 hours.