Online employee reviews are becoming big business, for good reason. An iCIMS survey last year said nearly 1 in 3 workers have declined a job offer primarily because the company had negative online employer reviews. It also revealed that 47 percent of millennials have declined a job offer because of negative reviews online.
That kind of impact on recruiting means employers are paying more attention to what’s happening on sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Blind, and relatively unknown kununu, an Austrian-based review site that’s been around since 2007 and partnered with Monster in 2016. The competition, in turn, is also starting to drive innovation around the traditional employee review.
Case in point, kununu launched a two-way dialogue feature to its company profiles on January 30. The enhancement gives both companies and job seekers the opportunity to have their voices heard by asking and answering questions in real time. It’s part of its Question and Answer feature.
“The new Question and Answer feature from kununu gives potential candidates the opportunity to directly ask organizations questions, beyond the usual interview banter, and get responses from the company and a community of current and former employees,” said Samantha Sandstrom, talent acquisition administrator at iHerb. “This tool helps us to understand what is most important to candidates and over time we can learn what needs to be addressed to ensure our applicants are confident in the organization and their decision to join our team.”
The Question-and-Answer feature gives job seekers access to another thread of knowledge, in addition to regular reviews, as well as the option to post questions that may not be answered through employer profile or review content. Anyone who has taken the time to leave a review, along with company representatives, is alerted to new questions and can respond in order to help job seekers learn more about the companies to which they want to apply.
Click here to see it in action.
“Kununu has always been focused on providing workplace insights that matter,” said Moritz Kothe, CEO at kununu. “By realizing the pain points job seekers are now challenged with, we are able to work on solutions that will ease their hunt for the ultimate position and help companies better understand what their potential candidates are really thinking about.”
While kununu has a ways to go before it catches up to bigger players like Glassdoor and Indeed, the Monster partnership doesn’t hurt. Additionally, kununu is highlighted in Google searches alongside its competitors, which can only help drive traffic and awareness going forward. Throw in the prospect of LinkedIn getting into the review game and things start getting pretty challenging for employers to monitor, let alone actively answer questions from prospects.
Innovation tends to march on, however, and transparency isn’t going away anytime soon. Competition is ultimately good for business. Thus, I suspect we’ll see more and more news like this from current players, as well as startups that are bound to pop up around this opportunity. Employer brand managers, get ready.