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.

Keywords in Resumes

I saw a post to a networking group the other day encouraging candidates to include a big grouping of keywords in their resumes. I say no. Here's why:

Although I agree with the thoughts on including key words on resumes due to the automated search processes used today, I don't personally care for the key words section.

Keep in mind, that your resume needs to serve multiple purposes: serve the machines, provide the summary info for the quick screener and provide detail for those that want more.

Kind of a challenge to hit all of those right? and remain clean, readable, well formatted, etc.

I prefer those that include key words in context, ie in the job descriptions, accomplishments etc. Then you can get some idea of how well they know those tools.

Those big buckets of key words are pretty useless in my opinion; they may get the search agent to pull you up, but when I see them my eyes glaze over. How do I tell the difference between someone who saw Java once 4 years ago and someone really good?

Include the buzz words in your positions, explain how and where you used it. One nice trick is to explain the projects, and list the tools used for the project. That way I can tell what you used when and where and for how long. Much more valuable. And if you used it in several different assignments, then I have a pretty good idea you might know it well.