Employer review platforms (e.g., Glassdoor, Kununu) have transformed how we view potential employers. These platforms enable current and former employees to express their views about companies openly, without any editorial control from the companies themselves. This direct feedback has become an important tool in shaping public perception of employer brands.
Our study, co-authored by Dr. Christoph Höllig, Andranik Tumasjan, and Filip Lievens, analyzed more than half a million job reviews to identify the factors that determine the companies’ favorability ratings (5-star ratings).
The results reveal an intriguing discrepancy: Although instrumental, impersonal, and cognitive content is more prevalent in employer reviews, it is the symbolic, personal, and emotional content that dominates employer reviews’ favorability rating.
Takeaway: Merely inspecting the frequency of attributes mentioned in employer review comments as a basis for changing company practices might be misguided.
The article is open access, and the dictionary developed in our study to measure instrumental and symbolic employer review content can be used for free: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijsa.12478