As a schoolboy, Keith Potts dreamed of becoming a millionaire. And at 14 years old, he launched his first business enterprise, alongside his older brother Eric. "It was the Sunshine Car Cleaning Company," he recalls with pride. "We used to knock on doors to find business — we were so unsuccessful. But I didn't care. We were in business!"

For Keith Potts, life is a series of grand adventures. And to an observer, it would seem that Potts ensures that his life is one bold move after another — whether his latest initiative is adding another link to his Jobsite job board network or buying into an African safari company.

He has built software for the military, specifically for the Tornado fighter jet. His next move was to briefly retire, before the age of 30, to spend time in his beloved Africa. His return to the UK led him into the world of web site creation.

Now at Jobsite, where Potts is group chief executive officer and managing director of the UK operation, this spring is seeing Potts' job board empire embark on some of its greatest adventures yet. A link-up with three of Associated Newspapers' flagship daily newspapers in London (Recruiter, 16 April) will see the Jobsite brand become one of the most powerful presences in the capital's online recruitment market.

Outside London, Jobsite's grip on regional markets will increase through new relationships with two different newspaper groups. Firstly, the Northcliffe Newspaper Group is appointing Jobsite as the official recruitment brand for all of its newspapers and "this is…" websites, and second, a partnership with Clyde & Forth Newspapers will extend Jobsite's Scottish footprint across 17 newspapers.

But that's not all. A new telecoms job board is being added to the Jobsite network. An aviation job board is en route. And one of the other myriad projects underway at Jobsite may well have a dramatic impact on how recruiters weigh up results from the job boards they use.

From the end of April, Jobsite will be counting all the traffic that their recruitment clients now receive to the vacancies they have posted across Jobsite's distribution network as their Jobsite.co.uk vacancy performance. This should allow the job board to accurately report the true reach of their vacancies for the first time.

Speaking exclusively with Recruiter several weeks before the launch activity built to a peak, the software engineer/father of twins/safari company owner/job board entrepreneur explained how his view of recruitment is shaping Jobsite's expansion strategy.

"In terms of recruitment," says Potts, "I see the whole of the world in terms of tiny little watering holes. You get a group of people gathering together at those watering holes, and they might be, say, barristers. So they will group together, drink in the same pub, read the same magazines — and what we do is, we go and work with those watering holes."

"People say 'a job board — it's written; what else do you need?' But I have got 300 projects that I am working on currently!" Potts says.

The initiative capturing much of Potts' attention at the moment is a network Jobsite is forming with the Northcliffe group where one vacancy will automatically be placed on all of the network's relevant sites at one time.

For example, a job for a legal assistant in Hull would first be posted on Jobsite "which has got the reach everywhere", Potts explains. "Because it is legal, it would be posted onto LegalProspects.co.uk, which is a specialist job board. We cover Hull through the 'this is' network of 30 web sites which are basically the Northcliffe areas, where they have got their stronghold with the locals, so it would be cross-posted onto that network."

"When people say Jobsite is a great job board, they don't really know what it is," he continues. "It is a great mass, a great recruitment network with about 60 websites all working together in one shape or form. Where it's necessary, we will keep these things independent, and that's really what Jobsite is today — a network of websites, and we are going to expand that even further.

"How we expand that is we build more and we acquire. We have been very, very acquisitive."

In defining Jobsite's unique identity in the job board jungle, "relevancy" is the operative term Potts chooses.

"Everything is based on relevance — everything has got to be relevant, relevant, relevant," Potts says. "What we are is all about relevancy."

Jobsite is also all about family and other almost familial relationships within the organisation, which has its head office in Havant, Hants. The son of a tropical medicine expert, the Hemel Hempstead-born Potts spent his childhood partly in Africa and partly in boarding school in England. Those childhood experiences have contributed to strong bonds with older brothers Graham and Eric that continue in the Jobsite offices today. The eldest of the trio, Graham, is the chief technology officer of Jobsite, and of Associated Media's digital properties. Graham's wife Karen is also a major player within Jobsite. "She has that project management 'completer' skill, and she is very good at it. Without that we wouldn't have got anywhere," says Potts.

Brother Eric is "just the most amazing business guy — enthusiastic, with lots of energy", Keith Potts says. "I remember when we first did business, he was on the phone to a big recruitment company, and Eric was so excited about what he was selling that he said, 'I won't let you off the phone until I have had a chance to demonstrate it to you.' Eric is like that — 'you have got to listen, let me come round your house, I'll show you tonight'.

"Eric and I have always got on so well — well, all three of us do. We were at boarding school together, and with our parents 6,000 miles away, you've got to get on," he says. "I can trust Graham to say, 'yes, we'll have that system live tomorrow' and I'll trust Eric to go to an exhibition and sort it all out."

As for his own role within the group, Potts says: "These days, I am the catalyst that brings it together. I'll dream up ideas; I am constantly dreaming up ideas."

The Potts family's closeness and synergies inform the way colleagues are recruited to work within the business. "We only work with really nice people — that is the number one criteria," Potts admits.

Jobsite is not the only enterprise in which the Potts family is collectively engaged. In recent years, they joined forces to buy Zambia based Norman Carr Safaris, which takes the brothers back to the days of their childhoods. "Once you have Africa in your heart, it is there forever," he says. "It is just the most spectacular place."

Asked how the two businesses mesh, Potts says that the pair share a common goal of keeping customers — from candidates and recruiters to staff — happy. Jobsite's experience with satisfaction surveys, marketing questionnaires and the like transfers well to the safari business, where the operators need to know what their customers and staff like, and what they don't — in fact, seeking such information has become an ingrained habit for the Pottses. "We can't help ourselves," Potts admits. "And I think it has given me that feeling that I am quite portable because if I can run a safari business, I can run a digital business or anything else."

Potts' inclination to question and survey is equalled only, perhaps by his commitment to 'building a better beast' in terms of creating the right technological vehicles to execute his visions.

"Because I'm a techie at heart, I've always felt it was important that we build the right systems," Potts says. "The job board is not finished — it will never be finished; it moves on with new models and new software. We just keep building and imagining, and we churn out the next one and the next one and the next one.

"So," he continues, "focusing on the technical side has been important as well as the family element… It's about getting the technology right, about getting the right people in the right jobs, and trying in a polite and courteous manner to get the wrong people away from the right jobs, as it were.

"We try to marry up the perfect match. That's pretty much where we've been heading — and that's our future."



JOBSITE: A SNAPSHOT
1995: Keith, Graham and Eric Potts establish Jobsite as a multi-sector online recruitment service. That same year, Jobsite introduces 'Jobs-by-email' service

1999: Expansion of Jobsite service to corporates with clients including Motorola, Microsoft and Sony

2004: Associated New Media, a division of Associated Newspapers (Daily Mail & General Trust) acquires Jobsite

2008: Becomes the official online recruitment partner for three key London newspapers — Evening Standard, Metro (London) and London Lite — as well as rolling out the brand to a number of regional market newspapers.