We recommend that advisers/planners use Google and VouchedFor reviews to impress potential clients on their digital journey to your door.
If you’re a business of a certain size and looking to recruit, there’s a third platform you should add. It has the potential to impress both potential recruits and prospective new clients. Unfortunately, our research shows that it’s overlooked by most advice/planning firms.
What is it?
Glassdoor.
Click here to take a look, but only after you’ve read the rest of this week’s blog!
Let’s start by explaining more about how it works.
The platform allows your team members, both past and present, to rate and review their experience of working for you. They are asked to:
- Rate your business out of five across a range of categories including, culture/values, diversity and inclusion, work-life balance and career opportunities
- Explain the pros and cons of being part of the team
- Say how likely they are to recommend the business to a friend.
This information is then used to display:
- Individual reviews
- An overall score in each category for the employer
- A “Recommend to a friend” rating.
To see how this works in practice, click here to look at our Glassdoor profile and read our 19 reviews.
Impress potential recruits, as well as new and prospective clients
There are six reasons why you should consider collecting reviews on Glassdoor.
1. Impress recruits
The reviews will impress potential recruits and give valuable insights into what it’s like to be part of your team.
Both are incredibly important at a time when good quality advisers/planners, paraplanners, and administrators are hard to find. Furthermore, the reviews help cut through the corporate perspective and give candidates a genuine insight into your business.
2. Impress new clients
Prospective new clients will also be impressed by the great reviews.
When a prospect, including those recommended to you by an existing client, searches for you online, a link to your Glassdoor reviews will appear. Your overall score is even visible in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) so they’ll see it without needing to click into Glassdoor! That’s a fantastic opportunity to show a potential client the great environment you’ve created for your team.
Who doesn’t want to be a client of a business where the team is happy and treated well?
3. Provide feedback
The reviews are a source of valuable feedback you can use to improve your business.
4. Gain a competitive advantage
As you’ll learn in a minute, most advice/planning firms don’t have reviews on Glassdoor.
Assuming the reviews are generally positive, firms that have them will be at a significant competitive advantage when it comes to recruitment. That’s important when demand is outstripping supply for certain job roles.
5. Use quotes when recruiting
You can use the quotes and data you collect on Glassdoor in your recruitment advertising as well as your wider marketing.
6. Get ahead of the game
Finally, as any current or former employee can leave a Glassdoor review for your business (even if you don’t already have a profile), there’s a chance that someone might leave a negative review.
If you already have a bunch of positive reviews, that will balance out any criticism and could even get the disgruntled employee (or former employee) to think twice about leaving a negative review. It pays to get ahead of the game!
Experts agree it is a great platform
It isn’t only us who see the benefit of advice/planning firms building reviews on Glassdoor.
We asked James Barden of The FIMS Consultancy for his view: “As a recruiter, being able to refer a candidate to positive independent reviews is invaluable.
“Candidate’s motivators are changing towards company culture, brand identity and position in the professional and local community. They need to get beyond the brand and speak to the real advocates of a company, its employees. I recommend that candidates speak to current and ex-employees who are easily accessible on LinkedIn.
“Sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor, really come into their own saving time and getting a median unbiased view of a company from an employee’s perspective.”
80% of advice/planning firms aren’t using Glassdoor
So, if having Glassdoor reviews is a good idea, how many advice/planning firms engage with it?
Unfortunately, not many!
Of the firms in this year’s New Model Adviser Top 100:
- Only 20% have Glassdoor reviews
- The firms with a profile have an average of eight reviews
- The average score is 3.8/5.
When recruitment is tough, those figures mean there’s a huge opportunity for the firms who engage with Glassdoor to stand out from the crowd.
Don’t let this put you off
Glassdoor also acts as a jobs board, similar to those on Indeed, LinkedIn and so on. I’ve heard some business owners express concerns that asking their team to leave a review could mean they are distracted by an advert for an alternative position.
I understand the concern but is it really a problem in reality?
Firstly, if a member of your team isn’t happy, they might already be looking for an alternative role.
Secondly, in such a competitive market they probably already get numerous approaches from recruiters every week on LinkedIn.
Finally, the chances are that they’re happy and will leave you a very positive review, perhaps with feedback that you can use to improve your business.
Tell us what you think
We’ve engaged with Glassdoor over the past year or so and are proud to have collected 19 reviews with an average score of 4.8/5 and a 95% recommendation rating.
It’s helping, too. Potential recruits have told us that they’ve looked at our reviews before deciding to apply. So, with only 20% of advice/planning firms using Glassdoor, many are missing a trick that would impress both potential recruits and clients.
We realise this is something new that we’ve not talked about before, so we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Go and check out our Glassdoor profile and then, if you fancy getting in touch, drop us a quick email to hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call us on 0115 8965 300.
