So we’re not sure what it was.

Whether it was our revenues quadrupling this year over last year (where they were anyway a 10x over the year before).

Or whether it was the opening of offices in Singapore, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur, on top of growing the Bombay operation alone to over 50 people.

Or if that put us somewhere in the top 5 or 10 search marketing firms in the world.

Or if it was clients as diverse as HP, Kodak, INSEAD, MakeMyTrip, ICICI, HDFC and dozens more voting with their wallets for us.

Or if it was our December e-commerce advertising predictions coming true.

Or even the cool new algos our in-house math wonks came up with.

Or indeed our 10-million keyword database that’s threatening to grow alarmingly.

Or The Economist quoting us.

We really don’t know if any of these makes us among the “hottest companies in Asia” two years in a row.

It may even be the music on the 5th floor in Bombay. Or the mayhem on the 4th.

Or the purple walls in Singapore. Or the location above the sari shop in KL.

Or Sonali’s laughter. Or CJ’s tolerance of said laughter. Resham’s cool. Deepali’s calm. Lakshmi’s hyperactiveness. Or Geeta’s superduperhyperactiveness. Ratan’s quant leanings. Zainul’s wide-eyed wonder. Siddhesh’s spaced-out-ness. Javed’s oh-so-straight hair. Or even Shantala’s control-freakness.

We really, really don’t know.

But you know what – we’re pleased as heck to be among the “hottest”.

Or even the “coolest” – as one magazine termed us last year.

Just as long as we aren’t luke-warm.

Congrats to all Pinstormers, their clients, their families who put up with the work the clients threw at us, leaving us no time to even update our blog entries for over (gosh, we’re embarrassed!) 9 months, our friends, well-wishers, investors and everyone else in the whole wide world.

Let’s raise the temperature as we go into 2007!

By Debbie Cai

Most marketers have at least heard of search engine marketing, some might even be modestly involved with it. But few are likely to have thought about its possibilities as for recruitment.

Using search as a recruitment tool India-based child rights advocates Child Rights and You (CRY) received nearly 5,000 applications from 150 cities in 25 states worldwide, with over 4,000,000 ad impressions served, for 13 positions. The NGO hired all 13 through this method, and only paid per-resume received and a per-candidate-hired bonus.

“It works for a recruitment location anywhere in the world, looking to hire people from any specified geography, for any given profile,� Geeta Sethi, country manager, Pinstorm Technologies, which worked with CRY, said. “Through search engine marketing (SEM), we have the ability to reach professionals who are not actively seeking a change — they would not have registered with job sites nor would respond to job postings — therefore, the quality of candidates is significantly superior as compared to traditional CV generation methods used.�

According to Sethi, search engines receive millions of queries everyday, and only a portion are for career-related search terms — which will obviously be expensive to buy. However, companies can serve up ads for cheaper search terms for less-obviously related queries to reach potential candidates who might not even be looking for a new job. For example, someone querying ‘linear programming’ or ‘regression analysis’ may be the kind a media agency is looking for; or someone searching ‘personal grooming’ may be right for the hospitality industry.

SEM as a process works best when campaigns are optimised — for a given objective, use the best possible combination of search terms, creative and landing pages which trigger the best quality and highest rate of response. Therefore, it is most suited to large organisations with recurring staffing needs, such as insurance companies looking for motivated agents, telecom companies looking for networking specialists, hotels looking for presentable front office staff and so on.

“We reach out to the best talent, whose consumption of internet and search is far higher than that of traditional media. We provide a securitised web based console for convenient access, sharing and managing of a database for a large volume of jobs across industries and countries,� Sethi said. “This process is more cost-effective as compared to traditional media, because clients pay only for results.�