What’s Google Telling Your Job Candidates in Business and at Work?

Before my first meeting with a new client who’s struggling to attract top talent, I do what their prospective job candidates do:  I Google the client’s company. The following search results (not inclusive of all results) will discourage prospective candidates from applying:

• Negative news about the company’s financial or compliance performance;
• Customer complaints;
• Employee complaints; or even more discouraging
• Little or no Google results.

Little or no Google results not only presents a product branding presence challenge for a company (even if the company’s success is based solely on referrals, prospective referrals still like to check a company’s website and/or Google results out before reaching out), it absolutely presents a recruitment branding challenge.  In this case, no news is not good news for your prospective job candidates.

If a candidate cannot find good news about your organization (Or find your website; do you have a website?), they may even assume that your job posting is spam, and/or that your organization is not viable.

How do you create authentic Google results? If you don’t have a marketing / branding / social media geek in-house, get thee to a consultant / vendor to:

• Create and populate your individual and company LinkedIn presence with a steady stream of company-relevant, good-news posts and information;
• Do the same on other social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and your website;
• Create video clips of your leadership team / hiring managers in action, to further humanize your brand;
• Create testimonials in all media forms (video, etc.) from current employees.

What is Google telling your prospective top talent in business and at work?