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When people are researching and learning more about your organization- which is the responsible thing to do before an interview process- will they see what you are selling?

Online tools – especially those in social media — have been beaten into recruiters and human resources heads to be used for recruiting and even screening, but what about the opposite? Screening companies or organizations, goes deeper than ‘Googling’- we’re networking.

When potential job candidates are looking at you to be an employer, better believe that all the guns are out.

Between LinkedIn, Brazen Careerist, Twitter, and even Facebook, interviewees are able to screen for content, potential co-worker character, possible commonalities, and most importantly- are you producing what you claim?

It doesn’t matter the size of the company, if you are claiming to be diverse, highly educated and social media savvy, we can smell a lie from an iPhone away.

How? By checking credentials online.

When people research you online, are you visible on LinkedIn? If so, do you claim to have a diverse group of individuals? Is that represented online? Granted, not all of your employees will be on LinkedIn or similar sites fighting for you… but their representation there can enhance your credibility.

If your company has a LinkedIn page, is your employment philosophy reflected? For instance, if you say that you hire people of diverse educational backgrounds, but all the people listed graduated from the same school with the same major, you have a problem.

Here are some analytics that people can see from a company LinkedIn profile (based off of LinkedIn data):

• an ‘About Us’ section where you can tell them about your organization
• common specialties among LinkedIn members that are currently associated with your organization
• current employees (that are on the network), and their title
• former employees with names, titles and end dates
• new hires with names and titles
• recent promotion or title changes
• popular profiles
• divisions

Why is this important to know? If you claim that you are a growing company and all I can see is that your former employees double your current and it’s all been in the past few months, something’s not right and defenses are raised.

The next few might come in handy as reflection tools for human resources, research and development and vision oriented people.

You are able to see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ career paths of employees. This is a great way to see where great employees have come from and where they go.

Are some employees headed to your competitors? It may not be immediately, but down the road there might be a connection. Are you making it?

LinkedIn also provides median ages, top schools represented, gender and common job titles. Are you looking to diversify? Then take a peek at your current situation in black and white- hop on LinkedIn and check out your organization.

This information is valuable to job seekers.  Are you taking a peek at what they see?

What are you doing to reflect your company online, specifically on LinkedIn?

Tags: Company Networking, Human Resources, LinkedIn, Marketing, right way