– by Ainsley Lawrence

– Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer with an interest in the way business, technology, and education intersect with the personal. She loves traveling to beautiful places and is frequently lost in a good book.

Your organization already has a reputation among customers and employees. Do you know what it is? Are you taking active steps to manage it?

If not, you’re not making the most of your recruiting efforts. It’s challenging to catch the eye of talented employees looking for new opportunities, and it’s also difficult to keep the skilled workers you already have.

Fortunately, you can improve your recruitment and retention by taking advantage of customer and employee insights about your organization and working to build a strong, positive reputation for your company.

Feedback From Employees and Candidates

The most important sources of your reputation among potential employees are current employees and candidates who have interacted with your hiring process. These people are sharing with others what it’s like to apply, interview, and work with your company.

Here are several ways to gather feedback from employees and use it to improve your hiring process and workplace culture.

Automated Emails to Candidates

A candidate, whether they got the job or not, can tell you a lot about what your hiring process feels like from the outside. It’s important to get this information so you can ensure you’re helping candidates feel good about your organization, even if they don’t get the job.

One of the best ways to do this is to automatically send emails to candidates after the hiring process. You can use multiple-choice questions to make it easy to process the responses or use open-ended questions to get more information.

Either way, getting information from candidates about how they felt in your hiring process is extremely useful and can help you improve recruitment.

Track Company Mentions on Social Media

A major part of your company’s reputation is based on what people say about the organization on social media. It’s essential to track mentions of the company name so you can determine what the general sentiment about your organization is.

There are a lot of social media platforms, but you can prioritize just a few top social media sites and still get a significant impact. Keep an eye on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, and LinkedIn.

Make sure you use a software program that helps you track mentions and measure the sentiment of what’s said. Knowing how you’re viewed online will make a big difference in your recruitment process.

Hold Employee Focus Groups

It’s important to talk to employees who are leaving — and we’ll get to that in a moment — but it’s even more essential to understand why employees stay with your organization.

To find out, you can hold employee focus groups or do individual interviews with your top performers. These are often called “stay interviews,” and they give you an inside look into how engaged and satisfied current employees are with the company.

For example, do employees feel empowered to ask for feedback? Are there communication issues? What do they like best about the company culture — and what can be improved?

By proactively addressing the problems and doubling down on the things that are going well, the organization can improve its culture and dramatically improve both retention and recruitment.

Ask Key Questions in Exit Interviews

It’s unfortunate when talented employees choose to leave, but an exit interview can help you understand why and address any problems in the organization.

Be sure to ask the right questions in the exit interview. Ask why they’re leaving, how they related with their manager, where the company could improve, and how the role aligned with what they expected. You can also ask how they felt about the hiring process, onboarding, work environment, and company culture. An employee who’s leaving doesn’t have anything to lose by being honest, so you’re likely to get valuable feedback.

If the employee is taking another job, ask how that recruitment went and what caused them to decide to take the new role. These answers can help your recruitment be more effective.

Using Customer Feedback for Recruitment

It’s clear how employee feedback can help you improve hiring, but what can your customers tell you?

Your customers’ expectations help you understand what types of employees to hire into customer-facing roles. For example, if your customers prefer a walk-through of your solution instead of being sent written information, you’ll want to hire customer service representatives who are comfortable with technology and can provide that service.

If you find that your customers want a specific new feature in your product, you can focus on hiring or assembling a project team to build and implement that new feature. Or, if customers are frustrated with a specific part of your process, you can hire new employees who are experts at process improvement.

Focusing your hiring efforts on roles your customers help you identify can make your recruitment more targeted and effective. It can also be helpful to work with our recruiting firm. American Recruiters has excellent connections with top talent and employers and can help you find the specific skills you’re looking for.

Use Feedback to Improve Recruitment

Knowing what your organization’s reputation is, both internally and externally, is vital to improving your recruitment.

The only way you know is to ask! Leaders who know how to listen and implement suggestions can inspire loyalty with both employees and customers.

Interviewing current and exiting employees, along with understanding your customers’ top needs, will help you focus your hiring efforts and attract the ideal candidates to your organization.