I walked into the white-washed corporate building with some tightness in my chest. Here I was planning on helping this company with a video marketing campaign to help them get more job applications. But so far the reviews I’d seen of them online weren’t encouraging. 

“Bad management”

“Negative experience”

“Treat employees like they’re disposable”

Uff-da. I wasn’t sure how my program was going to help them. After all, our mission as a company was to help companies with great culture attract the best talent. These sure didn’t look like signs of a great culture. 

But as I spoke with the management and employees at the company, my eyes were opened to more of the context of what was going on: they were working with a tough rotating shift schedule, they’d had issues with managers in the past that had since been dealt with, and they had just recently put cutting-edge benefits into place. It became clear that the company wasn’t as bad as I’d initially thought. In fact, they were doing a lot of things really well. 

So what was with the disproportionate amount of bad reviews online that made me think this wasn’t a good-fit client? 

Turns out this company was just another example of what we see all of the time. Their online reviews were telling the wrong story about what it was like to work there. 

Most employers still just focus on the traditional side of recruiting: put a job description together and throw it out on Indeed or the like and wait for applications to come in. 

The truth is, however, HR tactics for finding talent haven’t kept up with the times. Yes, posting openings on job boards is still incredibly important. But many employees, especially millennials and Gen Z, care more about the places they work than previous generations. They will do the research into these companies and evaluate them based on reviews and the content they see (or don’t see) online. In fact, according to CIO magazine, “61% of job seekers will visit a company’s online properties (social media, websites, reviews sites) before they apply for a job. 55% say that if they read a negative review it would prevent them from applying.”

"The new age of recruitment is a race to show off who has the best culture through online reviews and social media content, such as video."

Employers must stop depending on reactive recruiting: putting the job up on the job board and crossing their fingers in hopes that the right people apply. Instead, the new age of recruitment is a race to show off who has the best culture through online reviews and social media content, such as video (I’ll talk about that in another article). No longer can companies treat their employees poorly and expect that they’ll continue to get more applications. They’ll get poor reviews on Indeed and other platforms. Then new waves of candidates will read those reviews and simply won’t apply. 

But remember: no amount of review system will help you as an employer if your employees aren’t having a good time to begin with. There’s no use in trying to put lipstick on a pig. The best solution for poor reviews is leading your company with empathy and care for your employees. Once you’re doing this, use a system that encourages employees to review you online. You need a system to prompt these reviews because employees seldom think of reviewing you unless they’ve had a problem.

If you’re running a company with a decent culture, make sure you put effort into knowing what your reviews are. Then check them weekly or monthly to ensure you’re responding to them, even the good ones. This will give a great impression to potential candidates. In order to generate more positive reviews, work with an agency who can help you develop a system that prompts happy employees to review you. Make sure your reviews are telling the right story or you risk losing job applications from some of the best candidates.