Burnish Your Reputation As a Great Employer: 6 Actionable Tips

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Don’t see your company’s name on any best places to work lists yet?

Keep working at it. Try these six strategies, listed here in no particular order, to burnish your reputation as an above-average employer. In a super-tight labor market, no amount of exposure is too little.

  1. Get Listed on Legitimate Employer Review Websites 

It sounds obvious, but many employers don’t realize just how helpful listings on reputable employer review websites can be. Go beyond the usual suspects, like Glassdoor and Indeed, to find niche-oriented sites that post in-depth, incisive information from real (likely anonymous) employees or factual analyses based on publicly available metrics. Or both.

In other words: don’t hide from the data.

  1. Encourage Current Employees to Leave (Honest) Reviews 

Don’t hide from your current employees, either. Encourage them to leave honest feedback about their experiences on established crowdsourced review sites, such as Glassdoor. You can use this information to improve your internal processes and, though most feedback will be anonymized, identify patterns of complaints about specific team members. 

  1. Connect Your Employees’ LinkedIn Profiles With Your Company Page 

Encourage current employees to connect their LinkedIn profiles with your LinkedIn company page. For better or worse, the quantity and quality of your page’s connections has a direct, powerful impact on candidates’ perceptions of your organization’s competence. In other words: if you appear not to care whether your employees know you exist on LinkedIn, top-shelf candidates probably won’t either. 

  1. Monitor Your Job Site Mentions 

They’re out there talking about you, whether you like it or not. Keep close watch on employee and candidate mentions on highly visible job sites like Glassdoor and Dice. Pay particular attention to negative feedback about hiring or managerial processes. Such comments go a long way with fence-sitting candidates. 

  1. Tap Current Employees As Recruiters 

Collectively, your employees comprise a powerful, far-reaching recruiting force. Incentivize team members to evangelize (honestly) about what it’s like to work at your company. Consider going so far as to pay bonuses for hired referrals. 

  1. Practice What You Preach 

Last, but certainly not least, you need to walk the walk. If you can’t back up your talk with demonstrable action, it’s simply not enough to say you’re a flexible or progressive or “employee-friendly” employer.

Whole books have been written on internal policies, benefits, and perks that resonate with employees. Consider:

  • Flexible scheduling and time-off allowances
  • Work-from-home allowances
  • Frequent extracurricular events and team-building activities, such as happy hours and retreats
  • Competitive benefits packages that go above the bare minimum
  • Fringe benefits that exceed candidate expectations
  • Flat hierarchy and collaborative work environment
  • “People-first” management style

The list goes on. What’s suitable for your company might not make sense for your competitor across town. 

Are You a Great Employer? 

What makes a great employer, anyway?

If there was a single catchall answer to this question, hiring and retention wouldn’t be half the battles they are today. It’s best not to set unrealistic expectations; you won’t be able to please every single candidate who crosses your threshold, nor retain every single rockstar you decide to hire. If you do the best you can with the resources you have, and commit to getting better one hire at a time, you’ll do just fine.



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