Most Careers pages are boring. As we pointed out last month, some remind you of a visit to the DMV. On the flip side,  some employers do an outstanding job of making their Jobs section stand out.

Here are 10 solid ideas worth considering.

1) Show Your Hiring Manager

Once a candidate knows the industry, role and location they are interested in, the next most important thing is who their manager would be. Don’t make them search too hard for this — include the name and title of the manager in your job description.

This level of transparency is key to attracting A-Player candidates.

Crushpath takes this to another level below by making the name and picture of the hiring manager (“Matt Wilkinson”) the headline for the job description. Bravo!

2) Relevant Jobs (“Recommended”)

Increasingly, employers are offering candidates a way to match their social media profiles to relevant or recommended” jobs.

vmware and Red Hat Software both offer a Career Matcher feature through Bernard Hodes Group.

vmware is recommending 5 jobs for me based on my LinkedIn profile. They aren’t perfect, but the intention is good.

2.5) Relevant Jobs (“Nearby”)

Some employers with multiple offices, such as blinkx below, show candidates jobs that match their location (this is using the same LinkedIn API approach as Recommended Jobs above).

Disclaimer: blinkx is a client of Ongig. 

3) Featured Jobs

A new trend we expect to see plenty of larger employers offering is “Featured Jobs” in which a company showcases a handful of jobs most important to them at the moment. Salesforce.com (below), for example, promotes roles that they need to fill on a recurring basis such as Account Executives, Enterprise Business Representatives and Software Engineers.

We expect to see employers utilize videos for these featured jobs since they have greater/longer term needs for them.

Other employers list out “Hot Jobs” (jobs they feature based on popularity or need to fill) — check out Shell Global for an example.

Disclaimer: salesforce.com is a client of Ongig. 

4) Share Data & Stats

All recruiters and HR pros with any history should have some data about the hiring process to share back with candidates.

Check out Marketo’s Jobs home page (pictured below) or Parallon which lists the number of jobs by department/team on its Jobs Home page.

Candidates appreciate this because it helps them understand your process and may even help them with the rest of their job search (which they will be grateful for, thus giving your employer brand an uptick).

5) “Micro-Culture” Videos

For larger employers, an increasingly popular addition to Careers Sections will be “Micro-Culture” videos in which you show a video specific to one office location or department.

Google does a bunch of these like the below one for Mexico City.

And here’s an example of team-based micro-culture video: Technology team video from Goldman Sachs.

6) Recruiting Programs

Some employers create an entire program, such as Inflection’s “12 4  12″ programin which they aimed (and succeeded) in hiring “12″ college graduates in 2012.

Notice the marketing attention to detail they invest on this page, including a headline, strong image, copy related to their departments and  important  explanations of “why” college students should want to work for Inflection. It’s no surprise that Inflection is run by marketing gurus.

Disclaimer: I was an early advisor at Inflection. 

7) Employer Branding Starts on Your Home Page

If you were going to start a Jobs section from scratch, why wouldn’t you treat it like any other new Web page home-base  – the same level of copywriting/marketing skills are needed to position your employer brand as are needed to market your product brand (see Social Recruiting: Think Like Marketing).

That’s what airbnb did with its Jobs section. They use a headline and good image and took away other unnecessary navigation/calls to action that deter candidates away from their main purpose:  getting candidates

8) Create A Separate Branded Career Site

Bertlesmann didn’t settle on just have a Careers section on its own Web site — they created a separate brand, Create Your Own Career, as a Web site. Interesting approach.

9) Show Connections to Your Company

LinkedIn allows you to tap into their API data to show candidates who at your company they are most connected to. Check out La Jolla Group (owner of O’Neill Sports brand) below which they did through Ongig.

This is also a nice way to give some visual splash to your home page.

One allstar candidate told me that he once reached out to an employer based solely on a connection he discovered worked there (even though there wasn’t an exact job opening that he was interested in him) — this is a free and easy way to attract talent.

Disclaimer: La Jolla Group is a client of Ongig. 

10) “Join Our Talent Network”

Every employer should provide a way to let candidates show their interest in working with you, even if you don’t currently have a job opening for them.

This is often called Join Our Talent Network/Community and comes in different flavors such as this one from Virgin. You can market “job alerts” (or news or events) to your “virtual bench” of talent at a later time when you do have an opportunity or need.