On a post I did last week, Don’t Hide your Company Culture, Flaunt It!, I received some interesting comments & discussion on where candidates actually go when researching a company to get a feel for how it would be to work there.  Do they go to the company’s Career Site?  Do they search on Twitter?  Do they reach out to an employee on LinkedIn?  Do they look the company up on Glassdoor?

The fact is that candidates will use a variety of resources at their disposal to figure out if a job and more importantly a company is the best fit for them.  The real question from an employer’s point of view is how you can effectively create a recruiting hub for your company to educate candidates on your corporate culture and almost as important how can you get candidates to this hub.

This is important as you want to be able to have some control over what is said and displayed about your company with the ability to highlight extra-ordinary aspects of your company culture.  When creating your recruiting hub, you need to decide where you would like to house it.  Here are a few ways:

Career Site: This is probably the best place to make your recruiting hub.  But don’t make it just a listing of your job opportunities but provide insight into what it is to work at your company and provide interactive content

Facebook Page: While a recruiting Facebook Page might not be for every company, it can be a great for companies that recruit a large number of college students and entry level positions.

Twitter: While this is currently pretty rare for companies to do currently, having your recruiters as well as a company branded Twitter profile.  Getting everyone active on Twitter is a great way to connect with candidates and answer their questions about the company.

Your company can have more than 1 recruiting hub but I would encourage your organization to have one place above all others that you would want candidates to visit to learn about your company.  To get candidates to actually visit this recruitment marketing hub, you can do a variety of things:

Directly in your Apply Process: After a candidate applies to your company, automatically direct them to your career site.  They have shown interest in your company so providing an easy straight forward way to learn more about your company can have great value as the candidates makes it farther along the recruiting process.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): No matter where you have your recruiting hub, make sure to do the quick work of making it search engine optimized.  For each web-page, make sure to include appropriate keywords in your Page Title and meta tags for each web-page.  There is no reason you shouldn’t be the first search result in Google for [YOUR COMPANY NAME] Jobs or Careers.  Do the simple up-front work and get interested candidates to your recruiting hub.

Social Networks: Whenever you are talking to candidates on Twitter or Facebook, make sure to point them to the recruiting hub you’ve created.  Make sure to include a link to this hub as your link on Twitter.

LinkedIn: Your company profile on LinkedIn is a great way to not only make your employees available to candidates who want to learn more about your company but a great way to get candidates to your recruiting hub.  Make sure to include a link back to your hub.

Tell Them: Whether at recruiting events, career fairs or open houses, tell candidates to visit your recruiting hub.  Make sure to include it on any marketing materials you have as well as send email or mobile recruiting messages with a link to jobs and your recruiting hub to all the candidates in your Recruiting CRM or contact database.

Decide what your recruiting hub should be and build it with the thought in mind that you will be selling your company to qualified candidates.  Once you have it up and running, use every way you can to get candidates to visit and educate themselves on why your company is the best fit for them.

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies.  SmashFly provides the first Recruitment Marketing Platform that provides Job Posting Distribution, Recruiting Metrics and Recruitment CRM all in one centralized platform