Using Google Reader to Browse Craigslist

I don’t plan to make this a habit (writing tutorials), but I thought I’d share a nifty trick I’ve developed to browse Craigslist more easily for jobs. Craigslist, as we all know, is an excellent resource for just about anything. I’ve found a few jobs through their classifieds. I’ve also found coffee tables, couches, computer parts, etc. Craigslist is a great site, but its biggest downside might be its interface and usability. Fortunately, Craigslist offers an RSS feed for nearly every section of their site. By using Google Reader to subscribe to Craigslist RSS feeds, I’ve significantly reduced the amount of time I waste on Craigslist looking for decent content, and I want to share this trick with the world so people will think I’m smart.

This technique will work for mostly everything on Craigslist, but I’m going to focus on using it for job hunts. The reason behind this is simple: Looking for jobs can be extremely time-consuming. We can all thank the wonderful internet for not having to browse through newspaper classifieds anymore, but hunting down a decent job on Craigslist can feel just as frustrating. Why not spend a couple minutes setting up your Google Reader to follow the sections of Craigslist that you check often? Aside from being a more convenient and dynamic way to look for jobs, this technique will make your job search faster.

The Concept

Navigate to Craigslist and find a section of the classifieds that interests you. In this instance, we’ll be browsing New York City for jobs in the Art/Media/Design section (http://newyork.craigslist.org/med/). At the bottom of the page is a link for the page’s RSS feed.

How do we use this RSS link in Google Reader? For the sake of consistency, I’ll assume the easiest way to do this is to copy the URL of the RSS feed (right-click the link and copy the link address to your clipboard) and paste it into Google Reader manually.

Once logged into your Google account, navigate to Google Reader (http://reader.google.com/) and find the “Add a Subscription” button in the top left. After you click on it and paste the URL of the Craigslist RSS feed, click Add to finalize the process. As a result, you will have just subscribed to receive future updates for New York City’s Art/Media/Design section. Neat!

Why use Google Reader?

I’ve already mentioned that this will make your job search easier to manage and much faster, but if, for some odd reason, that isn’t enough to get you on board, here is a list of other reasons to use Google Reader to manage your Craigslist browsing:

1. Starring Potential Jobs – Have you ever wanted to save a job posting from Craigslist to look over at another time? How exactly do you do this? When browsing a newspaper for jobs, circling a prospect with a red magic marker will work just fine. If you’re using Google Reader, you can Star a post so you don’t have to go back and look for it later. At any time, you can sort your Reader to display all items you’ve starred. When you’re done with a post, you can just un-star it and let it blend back into the rest of the postings.
2. Browsing Jobs on Your Smartphone – Last I checked, eight hundred billion people in this universe owned a smartphone. Browsing the internet at the doctor’s office? Why not check out Google Reader for a minute and see if there’s any new job postings that interest you? Reader is formatted extremely well for nearly every type of smartphone, and checking for updates takes about the same time as checking your email. If you don’t plan to read through any job postings on your phone, you can at least star the postings that jump out at you so you can browse them on your computer at a later time.
3. Know What You’ve Already Read – For some, the differences in link color (blue for unread, purple for read) on the Craigslist website will do this job just fine. But for people who are browsing on a public computer, or for those of us who delete our cache, cookies, etc. very frequently, a page of twenty postings can be very hard on the eyes and the mind. Google Reader differentiates between read and unread content based on your Google account, so if you log in on multiple machines your history will be consistent.
4. Search Multiple Sections at Once – We’ve already discussed how to add a section of Craigslist to Google Reader, but what if you want to add multiple sections to Reader so you can stay current with different categories? The solution is simple: add each RSS feed to Reader, and then group the categories into a single folder. Now, when you click on the folder you will have a single list of multiple sections from Craigslist. If you ever want to browse a section individually, you can expand the folder and click on the category you want to browse.

Making It a Habit

To some degree, we are all creatures of habit. Changing the way you do something on the internet can be an uncomfortable process, but I can guarantee that this method of browsing Craigslist is worth the change. Not only will this trick improve the speed of your job hunt, but it will organize it too. A more manageable job search means you won’t be cringing every time you decide to sit down and look at Craigslist. You’ll be seeing more jobs per hour, which will lead to finding more quality jobs.

The worst thing anyone can do is settle for an available, mediocre job because they don’t want to look for jobs anymore. Use Google Reader to browse Craigslist for jobs (or any site for jobs, really – I also use it to check Grain Edit Jobs) and you will find your job hunt to be less painful. It’ll be less painful on the eyes in the sense that Google Reader is very aesthetically pleasing and easy to use while Craigslist is organized like the back page of a trashy magazine. It’ll be less painful on the mind because you won’t be starting from scratch every time you begin your search; with Google Reader, you’ll essentially always be picking up exactly where you left off. Job hunting doesn’t have to be a pain at all, so switch to this method and go get the job you deserve!

Relevant:

• About Craigslist RSS
• Google Reader Help