Staffing Firm Brand Reputation Management Strategies

How many of you have recently looked at Glassdoor.com or Yelp or any of the reputation sites and discovered reviews about you and your organization that surprised you? One of the key areas that many staffing firms don’t pay enough attention to is staffing firm brand reputation management. You may think you have thick skin and allow people to say anything they want about you, but it is not about your thick skin or thin skin. It is about the reputation that is being created for you organization and its effect on the hiring of consultants, internal staff, and the opinion of clients that see it. Here is a look into why staffing firm brand reputation management strategies are important as well as what to do to stay on top of this important factor.

What Are People Saying?
The very first thing you need to take into account is setting up alerts on the various sites to let you know when reviews are received. Second, you need to review the reviews. Internally, your staff is making comments. Externally, your consultants are making comments. Are their comments valid? Are you using their comments to drive change in your business? Anyone can say anything on these sites and help or hurt your staffing firm brand reputation.

What Can You Do About Staffing Firm Brand Reputation Management?
Most people think that there is not much that can be done when they receive criticism or praise on these various sites. Let’s use Glassdoor as an example. A consultant writes an inflammatory review of one of your recruiters. I always recommend to people that this is not a witch hunt, this is a fact-finding mission. Working with your recruiter to get an idea of who placed the criticism is helpful in being able to craft your response, not to call the consultant out.

The next thing to consider is that being defensive will never be helpful. Craft a response that begins with your actual reaction to the information. What I mean by that is that if the comments are accurate and true, then your response should be driven around what you are doing about it to correct it. If the comments are false, then diplomatically stating that you looked into it, received the information and certainly appreciate their feedback, but found that nothing was wrong is an acceptable response so long as you give them an opportunity to continue the conversation by adding your title, your name, and your phone number and email in case you miss something.

Additionally, be aware of Glassdoor’s rules. We recently had an entire review removed on a client simply because the reviewer wrote the recruiters name and location in the review. Glassdoor does not allow this. Simply reporting it, had it removed in 24 hours. Be aware of the rules because calling out one of your recruiters is not acceptable, but calling leadership out by name is acceptable to Glassdoor.

Why Is Any of This Important?
You can say that your brand matters as much as you like, but if you are not managing your reputation then it is being managed without you. The entire world looks at this information and wonders should they be working with you? The old adage is that if you make one person happy, they will tell five people, and if you make one person mad they will tell one hundred people. This adage was created long before social media and the internet. One person can now tell hundreds of thousands of people and sadly the one person with the positive review doesn’t always go and do it. Are you asking people to give their reviews on these sites? If not, you are being reactive instead of proactive with your reputation management.

The biggest key to staffing firm brand reputation management is sincerity and speed. Do not start making false statements in response because this will cause backlash. Stay positive. Get the facts and respond promptly and even with bad reviews the rest of the audience will see the effort that you are making. What is your staffing firm brand reputation worth?

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.