Can't Fill That Job? What is "The Help" Saying About You?

In the 1960's setting of the best-selling book and movie The Help, the reputation management channels were limited, but effective:

• In-person social networks that existed within the two distinct groups in the story:  the white (mostly) segregationist employers and the African-American domestic employees;
• Hard-copy newsletters;
• The telephone;
• And of course, the book, the-story-within-the-story, The Help.

Now as this movie trailer intimates (without giving too much away), the white segregationist Hilly clearly was not an employer-of-choice in Jackson, Mississippi:

As of September 2011, there are exponentially many more available reputation management channels available to talented candidates:  LinkedIn, Twitter and Google are merely the tip of the reputation management channel iceberg. 

And just as you as the CEO / Hiring Authority are using LinkedIn and other reputation management channels to perform research checks on just how talented / savvy your candidates are (or are not), they are performing the same reputation checks on:

• You as the CEO; 
• Your leadership team; 
• How you treat your customers; 
• How you conduct yourselves from a values standpoint;
• What the press says about you, good and bad;
• What your organization's long-range value proposition is;
• And most importantly, how you treat your employees.

Savvy candidates, among other methods, can do a simple search on LinkedIn to find your current employees in their own networks, virtual or in-person.  And they're performing reference checks on you. How do you and your organization hold up?  Do you know?

A sure sign to me as a recruiter that an organization is in trouble in any of the above areas is how many applications I receive from the current employees of an organization.  I can also confirm my concern by the rate of churn -- employee departures and new hires within a short period of time -- at a particular organization, also thanks to LinkedIn.  Is that the reputation you want to convey?

Hiring is beginning to pick up in certain markets, and SmAlbany is one of them.  The competition for talented candidates is beginning to splinter the good fishing of the candidate barrel that this last recession had created.

Having a hard time finding talented candidates to fill your positions?  Are you listening to the chatter about you and your organization currently buzzing along the multiple reputation management channels?  Are you coming across as Hilly, or as Skeeter?