As a follow-up post to my article yesterday, I thought I’d throw a poll question out there and ask whether you feel companies need to be highly conscious of how they treat job applicants — lest word get around that a company is a “bad apple” or an unfavorable place to work — or whether they’ll likely get away with rude behavior and not suffer any consequences it, down the road, when the market picks up.
This question falls into the realm known as “employment branding” and there are many consultants out there who stress the importance of companies building and maintaining a good reputation, in every aspect of their business operations, so that they’ll continue to be able to hire the best, brightest, and most talented workers. In other words, if you jerk one person around, they’re likely to tell their friends, who will tell their friends, who will post about it on Facebook, and before you know it nobody will want to come work for you!
I’m not 100% convinced that this threat is as real as some people make it sound, however. Americans, in my opinion, tend to have very short memories — and as long as there are plenty of job hunters out there looking for work, I have a hard time imagining a company (unless it does something SHOCKINGLY unethical – like Enron) truly needing to worry about this issue, as much as I wish they would. Your vote?
