Why Glassdoor Became a Core Channel for Communicating With Prospective Employees Glassdoor for Employers
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Why Glassdoor Became a Core Channel for Communicating With Prospective Employees

At Randstad, we’ve been using Glassdoor for a number of years, predominantly for employer branding and employee engagement, and it has become an influential channel for us. In the beginning, we saw Glassdoor as a ‘nice to have,’ but didn’t pay too much attention to it, if I’m honest. Around three years ago, the volume of reviews grew and everything changed almost overnight. Glassdoor gave us greater visibility of our employees’ experiences and perceptions and you could see the impact their comments could have when enticing the next generation of recruitment consultants.

Glassdoor gave us an opportunity to manage the expectations of prospective employees, and this is key to any brand and employee retention strategy. It was clear that Glassdoor could play a valuable role in our talent acquisition strategy and we invested in an enhanced profile, piling it with relevant content that reflected our brand. We also started to promote our profile heavily, both internally and externally. Part of this process was talking to our senior management team about Glassdoor to get that all-important exec buy-in.

We started to see the use of Glassdoor by job seekers rapidly increase. We found that more individuals started to follow us and look at our jobs on the site, as well as read reviews. We also found that candidates started to mention our Glassdoor profile during their interviews with us and asked really niche questions based on the reviews. We’ve even had examples where a candidate has had two offers on the table and they have chosen Randstad, partly due to our Glassdoor profile. Our talent acquisition team actually use our Glassdoor reviews and ratings with candidates, because they know what an impact it has. We can explain why we think we are a great company to work for, but ultimately people are influenced more by their peers, so we let our reviews do the talking for us. We find that it helps us hire people who are a better fit.

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At Randstad, we live and breathe our tech and touch approach. As a Glassdoor client, you can get access to some valuable data on the back end. I love data and analytics, so I started really drilling into the detail around who is looking at our profile and which other employers they are interested in. I can also see how we measure up to key competitors, and I can use this data to help inform my conversations with both candidates and our management teams.

Like most employers, we have an internal employee engagement survey but it’s important to remember that Glassdoor is yet another platform to harness anonymous feedback. We actively ask our employees to leave us an honest review on the site to keep it relevant and up to date. We’ve had some great comments and advice which helps us hone in on areas to improve and identify where we are doing well. We’ve been able to act on this, and in doing so, show employees that we care about their feedback. This also sets the right tone when it comes to prospective employees too. Everyone loves to know that they have a voice and that they are listened to.

I’ve found the value of Glassdoor to be more than I expected in terms of employer branding and the competitor insights, as well as the feedback and advice we get from our people. It’s easy to respond to reviews and I personally respond to many of them. I think it adds a lot of value when someone senior takes an interest in the comments and posts a response. Only yesterday, I responded to a negative comment from an ex-employee and she contacted me off the back of this response. We’re now talking to her about her experience, about how we can learn from this and whether she wants to return to us!

Glassdoor keeps us honest and is now our main channel for communicating with candidates. Employee reviews are very powerful and it is easy for an employer to slip into complacency, thus creating a negative employer branding experience. Our work with Glassdoor has shown, however, that it can be used to create a positive employer brand and a positive employee engagement experience. I would certainly recommend companies should use the analytics that the tool offers — there is so much you can learn and there is nothing else like it out there right now.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.

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