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5 Tips to Turn Around or Turn Up Your Glassdoor Ratings (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this 2 part series on Glassdoor I introduced you to Glassdoor and how they are looking to reshape the world of hiring.  With 48% of U.S. job seekers now using the site at some point in their career search, it’s clear that they already are.  Today, in Part 2, I’ll share 5 tips on how to establish, repair or boost your Glassdoor ratings.  As I have cautioned in my blog on perfecting your LinkedIn Brand, you “must be authentic to be credible.”  There are no tricks below to cover up sins.  Having excellent reviews requires being an excellent employer.  With that off of my chest, let’s dig into the Glassdoor review system.

Once reviewed on Glassdoor, your company will have an aggregate rating from 1-5 stars.  Their platform is remarkably similar to TripAdvisor or Yelp’s for those of you familiar with those review platforms.  To see your score (or if you’ve even been reviewed) go to glassdoor.com and click on “Companies.”  Once there you can type in the name of any company you wish to pull up their overall ratings (Reviews) and see additional data on salaries, interview information and jobs that company lists on the site.  If we look up Glassdoor themselves this is what you’ll see.

 

 Glassdoor2

 

Boasting a 4.6 average rating, Glassdoor clearly knows how to manage their brand.  To give you a baseline, the average company score on the site is a 3.2.  It should go without saying that you should aim to be above that mark. The Glassdoor “Best Places to Work” award winners have scores between 4.0 and 4.7.  If your company is on that list, jump to the end of this blog to read my 4 tips on leveraging this.  If your company has yet to be reviewed or has several negative scores pulling down your average; I have 5 suggestions for you below.  Before you start, it’s once again important to get clear with what your company’s “Hiring Brand” is and why the best and brightest should consider interviewing there.  Glassdoor’s own website has some excellent content (employer blog & Hiring Brand eBooks) available on their site to help start you on this journey.  From this wealth of information, here’s my top 5 tips for establishing or turning around your Glassdoor score.

 

  1. Get a Free Employer Account on Glassdoor. This will give you access to all the reviews about your company, you’ll have the ability to respond to any reviews, and flag something if it seems inappropriate. You can also update basic company information like number of employees, and gain access to the employer center where you’ll find analytics around your page views and find out the demographics of those who are researching your company on Glassdoor.
  2. Encourage your employees to share feedback. Survey your employees to uncover the common themes as to what they most like about working for your company. That’s the foundation of your “Hiring Brand.” Wondering how to get started? Check out Glassdoor’s playbook for managing reviews effectively.
  3. Use the feedback you get from negative reviews to improve the employee experience of working at your company.  This is a non-negotiable in regards to improving your score.  How important is it? The CEO of Zillow (a $300M+ company) responds personally and frequently to reviews on Glassdoor.
  4. Select someone from your executive team to manage your Glassdoor reviews.  This means responding to both negative and positive reviews, and setting up alerts so that you know when new reviews get posted (something you can do in the employer center).  Glassdoor surveys found that the perception of a company improves with 69% of its users when an executive responds to reviews. There’s an excellent eBook put out by Glassdoor on this subject – Responding to Reviews Builds Trust With Your Candidates.  And rule #1 in responding? Don’t get defensive.  Listen, respond and take action to correct the problem.
  5. Set a goal that’s tied to improving your Hiring Brand.  Whether that is improving new employee onboarding, getting more feedback on Glassdoor or winning a “Best Companies to Work For” award.  Make this a company-wide initiative to make your company a destination of choice for potential employees.

If your company is below the radar (aka small and/or unheard of), a great Glassdoor score might be the only external validation your company has.  That validation can absolutely make a difference when competing for talent (more on the importance of external validation here).  Here are a few tips on how to exploit a strong Glassdoor score:

  1. Highlight your Glassdoor rating on every job posting with embedded links that will take them directly to your reviews.
  2. Create a culture where everyone in your company is focused on maintaining and improving your hiring brand.  We saw a strong sense of pride within our own team when Sales Talent won Seattle Business Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For in Washington State.”
  3. Discuss your company’s focus on creating a fantastic workplace with every candidate you meet. This creates a shift from offering a job, to an opportunity to join an elite team and a company that cares about its employees.
  4. Post your Glassdoor rating on the front page of the Employment section of your website, with a link back to the reviews themselves.

I’ll leave you with our own story with regards to improving Sales Talent’s Hiring Brand.  As part of participating in Seattle Business Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” contest, every employee within our company took part in an exhaustive survey.  Aside from the obvious benefit to our Hiring Brand of winning that award; I found that the feedback we received when reviewing these anonymous answers to be pure gold.  After reading the comments we identified several areas where we could make Sales Talent both a stronger company AND a better company to work for.  I strongly encourage any company looking to improve to take part in any “Best Companies to Work For” contests that they qualify for.

 

 

 

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Chris Carlson

My name is Chris Carlson and I’m the founder and President of Sales Talent. This blog grew out of my desire to document and share what I’ve learned in my two plus decades of sales recruiting and leading Sales Talent. Our posts are aimed at sales professionals and leaders that speaks to talent selection, team building, or career advancement. If you have a topic that you’d like my take on, please reach out to me.

You can find Chris Carlson on LinkedIn or contact him directly at:
chris@salestalentinc.com.