Recruiters, learn how to take control of your online reputation

Every recruiter knows how important reviews are. Because of the social nature recruitment has, positive reviews will help attract new candidates for open job positions and provide you with a steady income if you work with an agency.

Companies reading your reviews will want to work with you to fill their positions and candidates will want to apply for your open jobs thanks to reading what others have to say about their experience. But review sites can also impact your ability to attract top-tier talent. If they read how amazing the company is and how great it is to work with you, they’ll be more inclined to accept an interview – regardless if they’re searching for a new gig or not.

Thanks to the Internet, formerly private information about recruiters are now available for all to see. Applicants who didn’t get the job can now stalk your social media profiles and harass you. Or worse, they’ll slam your reputation on various sites so that no other applicants (or even companies) will want to work with you again.

A simple Google search can reveal tons of potentially damaging information about you, so it’s important that you handle negative reviews and the like in a timely manner. And if a recruiter works for a large company, those negative reviews can also adversely impact the business.

Applicants won’t want to apply to jobs if they read bad stuff about the people that work there. If you don’t handle negative reviews fast, you risk them being left on the Internet for your next employer to read if you ever leave your recruitment job.

Thus, hurting your chances for future employment. You’ll be looked at as a liability for the company and won’t land the job you’ve been wanting because of what someone said months, or even years, back. A solid online reputation is important for recruiters, so it’s crucial that they catch bad reviews as soon as they are posted to stop them dead in their tracks.

So as a recruiter, it’s important to see what’s being said about not only you but also the company you work for or were hired to represent for an open position. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

How To Fix Online Reviews

Don’t think that bad online reviews can’t be fixed. You can remedy them, but you have to be careful about how you respond in order to make it effective and change the public’s opinion. The key is to do it in a timely manner. The longer it’s left up, the more harmful it can be. 

Don’t create a canned or inauthentic response

You’ll want to come up with a new response for every review there is in order to not come across inauthentic or if you’ve simply copied and pasted a canned response. 

Encourage past applicants to share their feedback

Rave reviews will always help, so make sure that you ask candidates that you work with to always leave you a review online! Or, ask for permission to use their review on your website. This way, people will see all the other positive reviews and realize that the one bad one doesn’t matter so much if so many others had a great experience working with you. 

Use negative feedback to improve

Take those negative reviews and use them to change the way you find applicants and funnel them through the application process. This way, future candidates will have an amazing experience with you and want to leave you great reviews. You’ll also minimize the chances of someone else leaving you a bad review. 

Reach out to the reviewer

Find out why the reviewer left such a bad review by trying to reach out to them. Maybe you can explain to them why they weren’t the right person for the job and offer to help them find the job of their dreams if they’ll retract their review. 

Ask Google to take it down

You can always ask Google to take any damaging information on you (this includes Google images, too). You’ll have to plead your case, though. And Every company and recruiter will get a few bad reviews over time. One or two is nothing to really lose sleepover.

But if you have more than five credible reviews that are negative, you’ll start to see a huge impact on your recruiting efforts. You might see a decrease in resumes for open positions or get declined when reaching out to potential customers even before you get a chance to sell the position. If this starts to happen, you’ll just have to ride the wave until you can improve your reputation.

Do as much as you can to attract them to jobs, so focus your attention where you can make a big difference instead of worrying about the bad online reviews. 

As a recruiter, it would be beneficial to create a profile on Talentwolf, which has become the No. 1 recruiter review site for exposure in a competitive marketplace. You’ll be able to use it to gather feedback and interact with clients on an independent platform consumers trust.

Recruiters will be able to demonstrate why they are the highest rated recruiter in their market and more. But the site also helps boost your online presence and own local search with SEO friendly profiles so that clients and candidates can find you.