I suspect just about everyone’s familiar with Craigslist, the free online classified portal. Maybe you’ve bought a sofa, sold a computer or reviewed a place to eat.

What you might not know as a business owner is that Craigslist has become a great place to find qualified employees and freelance service providers. I’ve had very good results using it this way as have some of my customers.

The process of placing an ad is extremely simple and responses generally start showing up within a couple hours. If you aren’t getting the right responses, simply change the ad. Ads can be targeted to specific cities or worldwide. You will be surprised at the quality of responses too. Now, because Craigslist is a bit of the wild west, you may also get some pretty nutty or off topic responses, but they can be sort of amusing.

There is no cost for using this service and no real monitoring so you have to do your own due diligence when it comes to building working relationships. If you are having trouble finding employees this could be a good way to reach an audience that might not be reading the print classifieds these days.