What is Skill Marketing?

You may think that if you search a recruiting agency’s job listings and there are only a few jobs, that a recruiter won’t be able to help you. That isn’t necessarily true. One of the actions a recruiter can take when he gets an exceptional resume, one with unique skill sets, is to skills market that job candidate.
Skill marketing occurs when a recruiter contacts a company that does not necessarily have a job opening, but knows that the company may find a particular candidate to be a valuable asset regardless of not having open positions. Skill marketing can be a good tool to use to get noticed and hired by a company. However, you must be able to present your skill sets clearly on your resume, and keep up to date on trends in your field so that you know which skills may get your foot in the door.
A good recruiter knows what those skills are, too, based on industry trends, but also on building relationships with companies. He/she often has a unique perspective on where a company is headed. For example, company Q may be known for digital printing, but the recruiter may know through conversations with hiring managers that company Q is moving towards other types of digital imaging as well. If you have skills working in digital imaging, the company may just create a position for you to spearhead their new ventures in digital imaging.
So don’t just rely on job aggregators that list job postings from all over the internet. Feel free to use them. But also develop relationships with recruiters. Let them know what you are looking for in in you next job.  If they don’t see any immediate openings for someone with your credentials, ask these recruiters to skill market you. You may just end up with a great job that didn’t even exist before you asked for their help.