Websites, Google Ads and Automation for Staffing and Recruiting Agencies

For small staffing firms and independent recruiters who spend Monday keying timesheets and Tuesday rereading resumes they already have.

Forty-two timesheets arrived over the weekend.

Some are photos, some are PDFs, one is a text message that says "same as last week."

That is not a people problem. Your workers and clients are doing their part. It is a format problem: every client approves hours differently, and payroll and invoicing both wait until a person has typed them in.

What we would do first

We would count how many hours your team spends each week getting timesheets into payroll and invoices, and how many resumes in your database have not been looked at in six months. Timesheets are the faster payback; the resume database is the bigger one.

Rules that apply to your ads and records

Google's employment policy. Job ads are employment ads under Google's restricted targeting policy, so in the US you cannot target by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code. We build candidate campaigns on role, skill and city or radius targeting.

Pay transparency. The New York State Department of Labor says Labor Law section 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to provide job descriptions and compensation ranges for advertised job opportunities, promotions and transfers, and to state clearly if a position is commission-based. If you place workers in New York, every posting template carries a pay range, and a check blocks any ad that goes out without one. Other states and cities may have their own versions; we check the ones that apply to your job locations.

I-9 retention. USCIS guidance says you must keep a Form I-9 for each person you hire for three years after the date of hire, or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. With high turnover, that date differs for every worker. We calculate it from hire and end dates and flag forms that can be securely disposed of, for a person to approve.

Texts. Candidate texting needs TCPA consent. The FCC's February 2024 ruling applies the same rules to AI-generated voices.

Your website: two front doors

• For candidates: current jobs with pay ranges, a mobile application under two minutes, and a resume upload.
• For clients: the roles and industries you staff, your markets, how fast you fill, and a job-order request form.
• A job board that updates from your ATS, so closed jobs disappear.

Both doors should work as well on a phone as on a desktop.

Google Ads: candidates and clients are different campaigns

The LocaliQ 2026 search advertising benchmarks put Career and Employment at $5.81 per click, a 3.05% conversion rate and $67.36 per lead. For the client side, Business Services averages $5.87 per click and $93.69 per lead.

An illustration for a hard-to-fill role, with one assumption:

If each placement brings a meaningful margin over several months, that can pay; for roles you fill easily from your database, it will not. Management is $300 a month flat, spend is paid to Google directly, and the account is in your name. See Google Ads management.

Five automations for how a staffing firm runs

1. Timesheet extraction. Photos, PDFs and client portal exports are read into one format with worker, client, dates and hours; mismatches with the schedule go to a person before payroll. See document data extraction.
2. Invoice generation from approved hours. Once hours are approved, client invoices are built from the bill rates, with the approval attached. Our guide to AI invoice data extraction covers the reading side.
3. Resume database reactivation. Resumes are read into consistent fields, and when a new job order comes in, past candidates who fit are shortlisted for a recruiter to contact.
4. Pay range check on postings. No job ad goes live for a location with a pay transparency law unless it carries a range.
5. I-9 retention calendar. Each worker's retention date is calculated and tracked.

Hours and dollars

An illustration: 2 coordinators × 5 hours each every Monday keying timesheets × 52 weeks × $24 an hour ≈ $12,500 a year. Automating most of it also means invoices go out a day earlier every week.

Honest limits

If you place fewer than 20 workers at a time, a good timesheet app may be all you need. And resume matching only helps if recruiters still make the calls; it shortlists, it does not submit.

You own the site, the ad account and the workflows. We work with staffing firms remotely, including in New York and Chicago.

Book a free 30-minute call and bring one week of timesheets.