In April, Paul Courtney posted an ad at classifieds site Craigslist.com: "Seeking Entry-level Position as Equity Analyst." He described his top selling points and the kind of company he'd like to work for and where. By mid-May, three search-firm recruiters who spotted his posting set him up with job interviews matching his specifications. One led to an offer, which he accepted.

Could a position-wanted ad work for your job hunt? Since many of the sites that carry the ads post them at no charge, you may have little to lose. The search strategy has its advantages and disadvantages.

Here's a look at some of the pros and cons.

PRO No. 1: They carry the message you want.

Position-wanted ads can be far more creative than a standard online resume, says Jim McGee, general manager at Jobster.com, an aggregated job site based in Seattle, which plans to add a section for candidate profiles -- similar to position-wanted ads -- this summer. "They give people far more flexibility in describing their assets and interests."

February, Mary Wiseman, 49, wrote an ad in the first-person about her desire for a marketing job near her North Hampton, Mass., home. She described her work style, skills and employment history and posted ads on Craigslist and eBay (paying eBay $19.95 a month). Her banner copy: "Designing Entrepreneur. Advertised Price: US $75,000.00."

"I was trying to put myself into my dream job and show what I would be doing and how I'd be doing it," she explains. By late May, she had two job offers in hand, though neither closely matched the criteria she outlined, she says. She says she accepted a marketing-coordinator post paying in the mid-$30,000s at a local home-improvement company, ending a jobless stint that lasted nearly a year.

PRO No. 2: They often can be anonymous.

Sites such as WorldatWork.org, an association for compensation and benefits professionals based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will forward messages from employers to position-wanted advertisers who don't want use their names. (WorldatWork limits its ads to members only.)

If the site is forwarding responses to you and you want to be anonymous, just make sure your email address won't be listed alongside your ad. If an email address must be disclosed, create a generic one that doesn't use your name, such as jobcandidate@email.com.

While many job boards will omit job hunters' names and contact information from their resumes, current employers may still be able to identify them by their work history, says Mark Mehler, principal at CareerXroads, a recruiting-technology consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J. Position-wanted ads sidestep that problem.

Ms. Wiseman says she liked being able to edit and repost her ads "as often as you want." At most sites, every time a new ad is listed, those already there bump down a notch. Ms. Wiseman says she frequently reposted her ad on Craigslist to gain maximum exposure.

Mr. Courtney, 25, says he did the same. Originally it was too long and lacked detail, he says. "I revised it and really focused on selling myself," he says. "I kept it very short, focusing on my top accomplishments in a very powerful paragraph." The job Mr. Courtney landed as a result of his posting was his first since earning a master's degree in investment management in November, he adds.

Job hunters say classified ads help them to stand out from the competition because there are so few of them for recruiters to comb through. Yet most Web pages that list ads typically draw far less traffic than big job boards.

Still, Mr. Courtney posted his resume on three large job boards at around the same time he posted his classified ad. The effort failed to result in any calls from recruiters, he says.

Targeting a broad audience of employers, rather than a specific one, is usually less effective. "Employers are attracted to people who come to them deliberately, because they've done their homework and want to work for them," says Sonja Carson, president of Berkana International Inc., a Seattle-based executive-search firm.

Ms. Carson says ads can have more credibility if they're posted at the Web site of your industry or professional association. "It indicates you have professional relationships within that sector," she says.

Many job hunters who post classified ads at MarketingSherpa.com, a marketing information and research site, say their goal is to attract like-minded employers, according to Anne Holland, publisher. "We've had readers who told us they switched jobs specifically to find an employer who would support MarketingSherpa-style best practices," she writes in an email. "You're aligning your personal brand -- yourself -- with the site's brand, and hopefully your future employer's brand ethos."

"They're telling the whole world cart blanche to call," says Kathy Nichol, a recruiter in Conroe, Texas. While she uses networking sites like LinkedIn.com when seeking hard-to-find candidates for her clients, she avoids classifieds sites and job boards, she says. "The kind of candidate I want would never put their resume on a job board," she says.

Mr. Courtney says he received numerous calls from recruiters about sales jobs and other mismatches. To keep unwanted callers at bay, he added this amendment to his posting: "Please do not contact me with any positions involving commission trading, commission brokering, technical trading, day-trading courses, etc." The effort helped, but didn't stop the problem entirely, he says. "You've got to be specific on what you are looking for and prepared to filter through a lot of junk."