How Your Individual Reputation Impacts the Ability to Recruit Top Talent

Your reputation, experience and vision – for your company and for the role for which you are hiring – will matter to top talent and will impact your recruitment success. Continue to build that reputation and highlight it whenever you have the opportunity. Keep it appropriate and professional, but keep your good name and positive career record out there.

Foundations of a Strong Reputation

What are the elements that comprise your industry-leading reputation? Here are some qualities that can serve as the foundation for the image you need to attract high-demand talent:

• Integrity: Building and maintaining a great reputation means that you always do the right thing, even when nobody is watching. Integrity is the basis of credibility, without which you don’t stand a chance of success as a leader.
• Reliability: Do what you say and say what you mean. This positive predictability translates well to talent prospects, as well as current employees. Leave the excuses for the B-team players. People do not want to be left wondering how you will perform or follow through on their needs.
• Responsiveness: The importance of being a good communicator cannot be overemphasized. Establish effective communication standards, such as how soon you respond to requests and who can back you up if you are unavailable. Speed of response should be your number one priority.
• Problem-solving ability: You likely will have clearer understandings of issues and situations due to your background. Have the courage to ask deep questions and challenge assumptions as you forge the right solutions.
• Thought leadership: Everyone wants to work for the smartest person in the business. Thought leaders teach and influence others. They shape perspective and give people the peace of mind to know that they are working with the best.
• Visibility: Define your unique niche in the business world. Then get involved and be an active part of the conversation on topics relevant to your company. Stand up and clearly define your messaging – or your competition will beat you to it. Look for opportunities to speak to industry and civic groups. Be visibly engaged in your professional association.
• A positive digital footprint: Manage and leverage everything about you that appears online. Prospective employees will Google you and conduct thorough searches as they make career decisions. Optimize your LinkedIn profile. Periodically do a self-search of all social media, reviewing all postings related to you. At the very least, the first Google page should be directly influenced by you.
• Leadership through education: Writing a white paper, leading a webinar or teaching a course adds value and further demonstrates your expertise. Position yourself as a subject matter expert.
• Continuous improvement: Ask your employees and other constituents how they feel you are performing. Do this on a regular basis. Not all feedback will be positive, but that’s the whole point. Identify opportunities for ongoing improvement. Carve out time for professional education. You can’t expect to get better if you don’t work at it.

For better outcomes as you work to enhance yourself and build your talent acquisition success, partner with a professional search consultant from BrainWorks. Our approach is time sensitive, cost-effective and guarantees results. Contact us today to learn more.