Recruit and Attract Top Talent, whether you are hiring now or later.

Your company’s reputation with clients isn’t just critical to the success of your business, it’s also a major factor in attracting top talent employees to your company. Now is the time to gain clarity around your reputation, whether you are hiring now, or in the future.

Your reputation will do one of two things. If your reputation is where you’d like it to be, it’s going to make your recruiting efforts a whole lot easier. Unfortunately, if your reputation is poor, it’s going to be a significant constraint to the growth of your company. You won’t be able to attract the employees with the level of skill and expertise that you need to achieve your company’s goals/objectives. This is especially true when you are trying to recruit for hard to fill positions like Engineering roles.

Before you can begin managing your reputation, you need to be clear about what your reputation is. What your customers are saying about you matters, but what your employees and past employees are saying about you is just as important. Do some internal research – what feedback are you receiving from customers and employees? Good, bad or otherwise; you need to know. Once you’re in the clear internally, do some online research. Check out Yelp, Google, Glassdoor.com and some of the other rating and review sites to see what’s being said about your company, both from the customer’s perspective and employee perspective. When you Google your company name, what comes up?

Once you get clear about your current reputation, then you can strategize your plan for attracting top talent from there. Feedback is a great thing, but only if you do something with it. If it’s not good, it will take some work to clean it up. If you’re receiving negative feedback from employees about job satisfaction, leadership, etc. then you have to look closely at that and do something about it. Your employees are talking. Whether it’s online or not, is beside the point because they are talking. They are talking about their jobs with friends, family, at networking and industry events and what they share will either help or hinder your recruiting efforts. I know this firsthand. As a Professional Engineering Recruiter, I hear it all. When I’m speaking with people about potential opportunities, I often share the name of the company we’re recruiting for. A wealth of information comes in that exchange. Good, bad, or somewhere in between, it makes all the difference in whether the candidate is willing to talk.

If you don’t feel like you have a strong enough presence, then start a campaign to improve it. Be strategic here; it might be best to enlist the support of a professional if you don’t have the expertise on your team to manage it. The same goes with cleaning up your online reputation.

The bottom line is when someone says “Your company name here is hiring,” what do you want them to say? “Oh, they’ve been hiring for that position forever; I heard they aren’t a great company to work for” OR “My brother’s friend works there, and he loves it.” The response will make or break your recruiting efforts.

If you want to have the best employees working under your roof, you need to make sure your reputation is strong. If it’s not, hiring those employees becomes virtually impossible.

— Alissa