Housekeeping / Maid Needed in NYC / Craigslist
Housekeeping Community Online
We’ve noticed an increase in demand for professional Housekeepers within the past 5 years, especially in New York City, Washington, and Boston. Popular community websites like Craigslist seems to have hundreds of dialy posters advertising their need for Housekeepers, Maids, Cleaning Ladies, & Nannies, at unbelievable pay rates. Like this one ad we recently read where the poster (A Single Dad) was looking to hire a Housekeeper / Nanny to work evenings at his home 6pm-10pm, and he was willing to pay $65/hr. His only demands were that the housekeeper/nanny be a female, spoke Spanish, was attractive, friendly, and able to give him a massage. Yes I know, the ad lost me there too.
So we decided to investigate the ads found on CL and try to find out just who these posters were. What we found was quite astonishing.
Our goal for this investigation was to merely understand what job seeking housekeepers/maids and even nannies looked for in a job. What moved them to apply to a housekeeping job listing posted on Craigslist, and how often were they being mislead.
We decided to post several Housekeeper Wanted ads on CL, covering each borough of NYC, and ranging in pay rates from $10-$20/hr. Our ads varied in tasks required as well, where some mentioned heavy duty work loads, others simply mentioned, Housekeeper needed immediately, great pay, flexible hours, must have resume and experience to be considered. What we found was that on average, 75-100 job seekers replied to each of the ads. Surprisingly, many of the job seekers that applied to one ad, obviously applied to the second and so forth, but many of the job seekers were willing to work long hours, handle heavy duty loads for $10/hr, even though their resumes proved that they had several years of experience.
While finding a steady job has proven to be tougher for many job seekers these past few months, lowering your standards should not be an option. Unfortunately, trying to explain that to the many posters/members of Craigslist who continue to post bogus, misleading ads under the Gigs sections of CL has not been very easy.
Among the many disturbing ads found in the gigs section of Craigslist, we several ads where small website owners have designed clever ads with links leading real job seekers to their website full of fake job listings, and many Google Ads for cleverly disguised throughout the page for unsuspecting visitors to click on, while the website owner makes a few cents at the job seekers expense. Among some of the many websites we found, (EmploymentJobsCareers.com) was one that we found to have dominated in fake ad postings on Craigslist. With an average of 5-10 housekeeping and nanny job ads, they must truly be proud of themselves. We wonder how long Craigslist will continue to allow them to post their misleading and fake ads on their community board.
Our warning to the many job seekers who frequent Craigslist in search of a good paying job. Be careful! Learn to read between the lines of the ads found on that website, and remember, there are many predators lurking in Craigslist, and they are looking to take advantage of anyone in need these days. If the ad does not have a contact number available, it’s probably a fake. If the ad sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And if the ad is asking you to do things that you would not normally do in a righteous situation, flag the ad, and report them to Craigslist.
This blog was not written to bash Craigslist in anyway. We’re simply saying that CL has a lot of cleaning up to do if they want to get back to where they once were.
