Yeah, they’ll skim the paper, drop by the occasional job fair. But professional-level employees will not stop there. They turn to the Internet—and to their peers—to not only search for jobs, but search for the right company offering those jobs. Employees today are a more jaded, cynical breed. They know the recruiting spin, so make sure whatever you tell them is true, because they’ll find out.
Take Kevin Daniels, a marketing manager in Memphis, for example. When job searching, he first heads to the Internet to several job-bank sites. When he finds a position that sounds promising, he stays on the Internet, searching news groups for information on the company. “I do Internet media searches to find employers with a strong commitment to internal promotion,” he says. “And to make sure they don’t have bad downsizing records.”
Similarly, Alice Dawson, a business consultant in Dallas, is networking to find her next position. She dials up career groups for women to get the skinny on employers’ work-life balance; she goes online to poll women’s career groups. She wants to find a company whose culture backs up its work-life policies. “Companies will always tell you they do, but then you get there and the whole atmosphere says it’s not OK to leave early. So I talk to all the working moms I can to find companies that honor their word. And I’m still looking . . .”
Where will your company get the most bang for its recruiting buck? To reach managerial-level employees, a good reputation beats the flashiest promotions. Make it easier on searchers by posting not just PR on your company Web site, but any good press you’ve had—even if it doesn’t directly pertain to employment.
Don’t let incoming resumes lie fallow, says Tennessee job-search coach Tracy Bumpus. Lately, Bumpus says, professionals who admire a company are submitting their resumes whether they’ve seen a job posting or not. “They figure in this job market, the company’s going to need to hire sooner or later,” she says.
Workforce, June 1998, Vol. 77, No. 6, p. 48.