OK, so I thought I would start this series with something a bit left field. This is an example that I was responsible for so you can blame me . . .
A few years back I was working at Personnel Today, a website for HR professionals. We ran a story that the UK intelligence service MI5 was advertising for new agents. This seemed like a great opportunity to do something fun.
We managed to get in touch with a company that builds bespoke personality tests - Testsonthenet and with their help created a test, based on the job specs/traits listed in the job ads, to find out if our readers had what it took to become a secret agent.
It's a simple idea that worked well (it was a few years back so am going in search of the stats). It was fun, easy to do, interactive and was based on the give and get model of engagement ie the user gives some information, in this case answers a test, and they get a short report. We also incentivised it with a prize.
I have always wondered why jobs boards do not use this type of tool in their content marketing armoury - scrape the job ads (and do it over time to build a more comprehensive picture) and provide short tests to engage jobseekers eg Have you got what it takes to be a xxxxx?
[Picture credit: Mark Hillary]