Reputation Makes Recruiting, PR and Marketing Ring True (Or False)

One night earlier in my recruiting career, I was uncharacteristically awake past 10 PM.  When I'm up this late with nothing interesting to read or watch, I turn on the t.v. for background noise and catch up on my work email.

A new email pinged in at 10:25 PM, not from a colleague but from an executive-level candidate responding to a query email I had sent earlier that day.  Here's what it said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good evening:

There's no amount of money you could pay me to come and work for your company.  The (hiring manager) is a flaming asshole and everyone in the industry knows it.  Good luck with your search, your (sic) going to need it.

Sent from my BlackBerry
Please forgive any typos
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It startled me.  My husband Joel heard me gasp and woke up.  "What's wrong?" he asked, startled himself.

"Look at this email!  I've never seen anything like it from a candidate before," I replied, offering the laptop screen for him to view.  Joel smirked.  "I'm sure he's drunk," he concluded. 

I shook my head, bewildered at the candidate's carelessness.  "Friends shouldn't let friends email drunk.  Doesn't this guy care about his reputation in the industry?"  Joel arched a sage eyebrow at me.  "Well, is the hiring manager an asshole?"  I smirked my reply back.  Joel went back to sleep.

Just a few weeks after the drunken candidate email, I was networking on the phone with another industry executive to solicit candidates for the same job.  He was coldly cordial and (I presume) soberly to the point.  "I hear nothing good about your leadership team.  Your company doesn't have a great reputation out in the market.  Your sales have sucked for the past few years, and I predict you'll be out of business in the next 3 - 5 years."  I thanked him for his time and hung up.

Now, I love recruiting.  However, I listened to these two poignant and juxtaposed data points and came to the conclusion that no matter how good a recruiter I am, including but not limited to how positive an ambassador I am for my organization, no amount of recruiting lipstick was going to make the organization's reputational pig pretty. 

As the job market and the overall economy continue to rev up in fits and spurts, it's important to engage in organizational listening, in social media and other channels, to understand what your customers, candidates, vendors, etc. are saying about your organization.  And more importantly, to incorporate that listening into both your external and internal customer interactions, to ensure that the communication is consistently authentic.

Have a lot of open positions to fill and not getting a lot of candidates?  What's the word on the market about you and/or your organization?  What does my girlfriend Google say?  Or surely, you should have some inkling:  could it be the 20% of your workforce that you shed during the worst of the recession?  Or the chronic complaints from your customers about your service?  Whatever the facts are for your organization, consider addressing them proactively, factually, productively and future-facing.  And ensure that the recruiting, public relations and marketing streams are integrated, singing the same authentic message about your people and your products.

What's the word on the market about you and your organization?  And what are you proactively doing to address the message authentically?