Familiar song, different dialect. The recruiting blogosphere has introduced me to the concept of employer brand, which relates to the perception of the company as a place to work. From blogs and YouTube videos to stock boards and rate-the-employer sites, social media create new challenges to those who would manage perception. It's just another example of how a company's interaction with social media is necessarily multidisciplinary—in this case, blurring the distinction between HR and PR.
Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" opened one floodgate with its invitation to post reactions on their blog, but the continuing action is on purpose-built sites like JobVent (via C.M. Russell):
It's getting to a point where employers are going to have to hire someone just to troll sites like this and tecross to find and fight the digital dirt being spewed on them.JobVent is an anonymous, community-generated review site for employers. Employees, ex-employees, and fakers rate companies on a variety of metrics (such as pay and respect) and share their opinions of the employer. The site keeps running totals based on the collected ratings, and companies can show up in the "love my job" or "hate my job" leaderboards with their cumulative scores. Well-prepared job candidates will find what your employees have written.
To the list of ways that bloggers and other social media users can relate to a company, add employee—past, present and future.
