Part of my job as one of the owners of college job board CollegeRecruiter.com is to try to peer around corners. I need to look ahead for hidden risks and opportunities and make the appropriate adjustments to our strategies and tactics. Doing so is more difficult when I’m peering into the darkness of territory which is truly unknown.

Fortunately, for most of us engaged in recruitment advertising, there is little darkness around the corners when we are trying to anticipate what lies ahead. The reason is that our consumer marketing colleagues have always tested, adopted, and perfected new marketing practices years before those of us who are involved in recruitment advertising. This should come as no surprise given that the marketing budgets and training opportunities afforded to those in the marketing departments are many times larger than the equivalent budgets and opportunities in the staffing offices of virtually all employers.

Despite these disparities in resources, it still amazes me that the vast majority of employers are still relying upon anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of their advertising. Some employers look at how many times their ads have been viewed or clicked on. Others attempt to count applications, regard the source with the most applications as being the best, and then bemoan the terrible quality of resumes that they’re forced to plow through day after day. Still others rely on candidates to self-identify their source even though this is an impossible task for candidates as over 80 percent who click through from the board to which the job was posted do not accurately identify the source.

Compounding these problems is that fact that the vast majority of job boards cross-post their jobs to other boards in order to increase traffic and improve the user experience. When this happens, the candidate may see on XYZ Job Board the job that you posted to ABC Job Board. Even if these candidates fall into the 20 percent who would have accurately identified the source if they were on ABC Job Board, how can they possibly know to identify ABC Job Board as the source if they’re on XYZ Job Board? And even if they somehow knew, what incentive do they have to care enough to answer the question accurately? The whole process is so riddled with holes as to make lovers of Swiss cheese salivate.

Bullet proof, scientifically validated, real, honest to goodness, fully automated tracking
So what’s the solution? Tracking. Not anecdotal or self-identification tracking but bullet proof, scientifically validated, real, honest to goodness, fully automated tracking. Folks, in case your counterparts in marketing neglected to share this with you, it has been more than a decade since cheap, well designed tracking software became available to track the effectiveness of Internet and other interactive advertising. Some of this software was designed for affiliate programs under which a site like CollegeRecruiter.com pays thousands of other sites a commission for referring candidates who post their resumes (see http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/affiliateinfo.php) or employers who buy products from us. This software can be purchased off-the-shelf for hundreds of dollars or even leased from an application service provider such as the one we use, Commission Junction.

Whether you decide to use off-the-shelf software to manage the program in-house or outsource to an ASP, you’ll find that your affiliate program software works beautifully because it will automatically relate the application and even the hire to the original ad you posted. You’ll suddenly know, really know, who applied or was hired regardless of where they saw the ad, how good was their memory, or how copious was your record keeping.

When you create a job posting, banner, email, cell phone text message, or any other ad you will enter into the software the web page address (URL) that the candidate will land on when they click on your ad. For many employers, this will be their main career or application pages. The software creates a unique and therefore trackable URL for you to use and to which the candidate will click through. But the beauty of the software is that you don’t have to create different landing pages for each ad. You continue to have one landing page but the software understands from the unique URLs which candidates have clicked through to that page from which ad, and it tracks those candidates all the way through to the point of application and even hire. Voila! No more guessing. No more nasty dropdown “how did you hear about us” boxes. And no more guessing at where your precious recruitment advertising dollars are being best spent. Oh yeah, and no more having to buy advertising for exorbitant flat fees based on such non-performance related criteria such as how long the ad runs or how many see it. Instead, you’ll soon find yourself buying your advertising from sites which are willing to run your ads on a performance basis such as $X per application or $Y per hire. And won’t that be a pleasant change?

-- Steven Rothberg is the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.