Web Traffic, Advertising, Etc

I get marketing calls and emails regularly from various firms promising to improve roirecruting.com's web traffic, etc. I ignore them (hope you guys are reading this), because they don't really get what I'm after.

I could care less about raw traffic, or even 'relevant traffic' when relevance is presumed simply because of some keyword match. What I want is really relevant traffic. Many of the firms claim to promise this by some sort of proprietary methodology, use of key words, etc. But I already know that key words are a poor tool for optimizing relevant traffic generation. My website currently says we do mostly hospital IT and IT Network Security, nationwide. But I continually get inquiries for Pawleys Island, or Finance, or Pharmaceutical related, which is not what we do.

I focus my advertising efforts mostly on targeted advertising to professional associations and networks of people that are very specific to my recruiting interests. If I send out information to a group of these people, 50% of the responses may be somewhat relevant to my efforts; at least worth looking at. If I post an ad to a general job board, the relevant response might be 10 or 20%. If I use internet key words and general advertising, it might fall to 2-5%.

When I was with another recruiting agency, we used to have to take turns reviewing all the incoming resumes. Each of us tended to have our own niche of people we recruited. When I was working on responses to my own recruiting efforts, 10-20% of the respondents might be of some interest to me; when it was my turn to review the general company applicants, the usefulness was maybe 1 or 2%. Generally speaking, that effort was actually a waste of time!, because percentages were so low I should've been spending my time working on something else.

Google ad words and similar advertising methods obviously have their place, but be wary of campaigns that generate quantity, but not quality, and in recruiting, quality means placement clients and placement candidates. If you are generating traffic that is just taking up your staff's time and energy, file and email storage, and other resources, you need to re-think your strategy.

Growing

ROI is coming to a crossroads.

Oct 2007 was our best month in history.

We are currently working with at least 8 active clients, 7 of whom are former placement clients (which means good clients). We have a total of over 50 open positions with those firms. And I just picked up 4 more assignments with a new client today.

It's time to grow.

We've had some sub-contractors working with us part-time, but with this much business, we need to start thinking about some full-time help. The question is: what kind? An experienced full-cycle recruiter? If so, can I find someone I will be comfortable with handing off some of my near and dear clients? (not so sure about that). If I hire someone with their own niche, that's great, but it doesn't help me with my work load. How about a junior person? but then we'd be sort of developing into the split desk, account rep/recruiter setup that I've blogged about before. How do I do that and maintain the quality of the process and connections with the candidates (you get a lot of intel from them)?

I'll be more content to maintain the status quo, rather than hire mediocre people, or create a revolving door, that will diminish the service my clients have to come to expect. I can make a good living doing continuing to do what I'm doing. In most respects, it might be less of a headache to leave it be. But it's hard to say no to more business if the business is there.

It's really all about finding the right people, and keeping them!