Employer Branding: 5 Tips for Dealing with Employer Reviews on Kununu

Employer Branding and PR for employers have changed massively in the age of social media. Thanks to employee reviews, applicants benefit from unprecedented transparency about what’s really going on behind the scenes at a company. With around 300,000 reviews and an average of 1.5 visitors per month, kununu is the largest and most professional employer review platform in the German-speaking world. Since 2013, kununu GmbH has been part of XING AG, the largest German-language business and recruiting network. Based on identical company names, company profiles are therefore now automatically integrated on both sites.

On the kununu website, visitors target specific companies. But kununu’s SEO strategy also works indirectly, for example when applicants use Google to find out more about potential employers. The kununu profile often appears among the first search results, of not only the company’s name:

Even with general career-relevant criteria and search terms, such as work-life balance or further training, the rating portal appears with corresponding profile recommendations in the search results.

It is therefore essential for companies to get to grips with platforms such as kununu and to act and react appropriately. We have five tips that summarize the most important scenarios.

1. Employers should not shy away from platforms like this one, and possibly from their public criticism, but should actively participate and cultivate a dialogue. As you can see from the last example, this also has many advantages for companies. Well-maintained company profiles, the integration of job ads or recruiting videos, and comments are a direct way to reach a highly relevant target group.
2. Evaluators in the fewest cases intent to harm their company, but usually want to point out actual possibilities for improvement or even brilliant achievements. Employers should be grateful for this feedback and respond to it. The first order of business after detecting a potential point of criticism (assuming regular monitoring) is therefore to get to the bottom of its origin. Is the criticism justified? If so, what measures should be taken to improve it? In addition, HR managers can create an employer account and publicly comment on the reviews, or even thank them for praise. How companies deal with criticism is often a much more important signal for applicants than the criticism itself.
3. Happy employees are the figurehead of every successful company and the result of good HR policies. However, it’s mostly not the satisfied employees who make public comments about their employer. You can only win, both internally and publicly, by signaling an open feedback culture and actively inviting employees to give their evaluations.
4. If false claims are made, employers should contact the kununu service and provide evidence that the reviews they submitted do not correspond to reality.
5. As a CEO, you also have the option of submitting a rating for the user tranparently and you should make use of that. It shouldn’t however be more than one, genuine contribution. Falsifying reviews as a counter-strategy can only backfire. Users usually recognize such manipulations immediately, which can cause substantial damage to an employer’s image. In addition to kununu, there are a number of other employer rating portals that you should also keep an eye on. In German-speaking countries, there are the following other platforms, among others: Jobvoting.de, Meinchef.de, Arbeitgebertest.de, Bizzwatch.de and Meinpraktikum.de.