Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.

As I was surveying the Twittersphere this morning, I came across a great tweet by the Job Board Doctor (@JobBoardDoctor):

First off, this is a great idea for job boards. Training companies to create great job advertisements is a great retention strategy as not only will the companies be grateful to the job boards but the training will enable those companies to be more successful on their job ads. A huge win-win for both parties.

But as I thought about it, why should this be just a strategy for job boards? Companies that are recruiting specialized talent can provide similar programs to job seekers that can help them bring in top talent as well. What types of programs do you ask? Here are a few examples:

Training / Certification Programs: If your company is looking for top professionals that require licenses or training, set up free courses on your career site that require email sign-up. Not only will the trainees be grateful for the free help but they will identify your company as a leader in that particular industry. And best of all, you know that every person that signs up keeps up to date with current trends in the industry!

Real World Example: A great example of this is HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University. While this program is somewhat client focused, this certification program provides them with a great way to interact with internet marketing professionals who may be potential employees.

Resume / Cover Letter Critique: A simple service that is probably more helpful to entry to early level candidates. This can be a great way to increase your employer brand and attract bright candidates to your company.

Real World Example: General Electric used to have a Resume Critique day every year at Boston College. Not only was it a helpful service to students but it also helped them recruit the best students into their leadership programs as many students had them top of mind.

Industry News Feed: Create a feed that has useful news and articles on trends happening in your industry. Make sure that you continuously update this feed daily so that it remains useful. This may be a great way to reach passive candidates that want to keep up to date with current industry trends.

Those are a few ways you can attract top talent to your Career Site and reach them outside the traditional sourcing and job ad distribution methods. Be creative with how you reach candidates and you can reach more qualified candidates than you did before.

Be Useful in your recruitment marketing and top candidates will reward you for it!

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly is the provider of the first recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that provides companies and staffing firms with the best real time recruitment metrics for all their recruiting efforts online.