Do you know where your money came from last year? You should....

Where did your business come from last year?

I keep records of everything. Candidates I introduce to my clients, the source of those candidates, job order activity, source of job orders, etc. Nothing crosses my desk that I am not aware of the “where, why, how, when” background story.

Historically I have used the following to track sources: Client, Referral, Split, Recruit, Marketing, Linkedin and Database. Now I’m sure there is plenty of room to shoot some holes in that list – but it’s what I use.

As I began to review my numbers from last year I realized there was a category missing – Social Media. So I did my best to backtrack the year and tally my activity with the new info.

Was I surprised to find that for the most part – the new category was not needed? All told I had 2 potential new clients (job orders) that interviewed several candidates. It almost worked out but in the end I did not
make a placement. As far as candidates sourced through SM - I introduced 4 candidates that were referred to me by people I met on Twitter.

For the record I do not view Linkedin as Social Media. It is an online resume database and job board.

So where did my placements come from?

Candidate Source:

Job Posting (Free sites, state job boards, various niche boards) - 17.6%

Referral – 17.6%

Split – 29.4%

Recruit – 17.6%

Linkedin – 5.8%

Database - 5.8%

Call-in - 5.8%

Client Source:

(P.S - Client means a company that actually paid for my service.)

On-going Client – 58.8%

Referral – 5.8%

Marketing – 17.6%

Split – 17.6%

Do you know your numbers?

Comment by Harold Ensley on January 4, 2011 at 9:44pm: I tend to agree with your exclusion of linkedin as social media. Not surprised on your SM results. Besides, those you know on social media might be an extension of another relationship you have - ie) phone, email, so it really blurs. I tend to think of social media as a telephone, it's simply a tool and not a source in itself.

Comment by C. B. Stalling!! on January 5, 2011 at 9:32am: I have never made a placement thru SM, I use it as a tool but only look during non prime time hrs

Comment by Jim Sullivan on January 19, 2011 at 11:31am: I think SM sucess depends on what type of candidates you are targeting. I find that sales & marketing specialists for example use twitter, facebook, & other social networks than say engineers. I also find they set RSS feeds from Indeed, SimplyHired, and Hound so they can stay on top of relevant postings from a company they follow or perhaps one that falls out of thin air.