One way to ensure that top-notch candidates apply for your openings is to help them get a sense of your workplace. Applying to be a “best place to work” and encouraging employees—and even job candidates—to share their experiences on social media can help brand your association as the great place to work you know it to be.

Best Places to Work. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has been listed as a Washington Post Top Workplace and has received the seal of approval from the Alliance for Workplace Excellence. This recognition drives candidates to ASHA: “People will just find our website because of a lot of the employer branding things we’ve done,” says Janet McNichol, CAE, ASHA’s human resources director.

Just applying to be a “best place to work” can be a helpful process. “We never entered the Best Places to Work in Indiana program necessarily to try to win it or to place well,” says Gregg Dykstra, COO and general counsel of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies. “Our initial involvement in the program was simply as a reality check, a benchmark for our own internal practices and what we could be doing better to attract and retain employees.” This year, NAMIC placed second in the category of companies with between 75 and 249 U.S. employees.

Glassdoor. The job search website Glassdoor allows employees and interview candidates to review the organizations they work for or interviewed at. NAMIC embraces these reviews. “I think more and more candidates are looking to sources like Glassdoor.com to get a glimpse of what it’s like inside an organization,” says Megan Trainor, NAMIC’s HR director. “We’ve tried to encourage people to put a review out there. We won’t know who they are—anonymous is the way to go—but it’s served us well. We’ve had potential candidates say that they’ve read our reviews on Glassdoor.”

Consultant Michael Cummings points out that the internet hates a void. “Employers need to be part of this conversation about their employer brand, because if they’re not, the story’s going to be told without them.”

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