How to Manage Glassdoor and Indeed Employer Reviews

Why review pages matter more than most employers assume

Candidates research a company before they apply far more often than employers expect, and reviews are one of the first things they check — often before they've read the full job description.

The pattern shows up consistently in hiring research: candidates weigh a company's reputation, not just the specific role, when deciding whether to apply at all. Indeed Hiring Lab has tracked how much candidate behavior is shaped by employer reputation signals well beyond the job posting itself — reviews are one of the most visible and most searched of those signals, and an employer with no presence there is effectively ceding the narrative to whoever posted last.

That doesn't mean every candidate reads every review word for word. It means an unmanaged review page — no responses, no recent activity, a rating that's drifted low with no visible effort to address it — reads as neglect, and neglect is a worse signal than an honest negative review that got a thoughtful response.

Monitoring Glassdoor and Indeed without it eating your week

You don't need daily manual checks on either platform. You need a routine that catches new reviews within a reasonable window and a designated person who's actually responsible for reading and responding — not "whoever notices."

• Claim your employer profile on both Glassdoor and Indeed if you haven't — an unclaimed profile can't respond to reviews at all, which is the single most common reason employers appear silent.
• Set up notification alerts where each platform offers them, so new reviews land in an inbox someone actually checks, instead of relying on someone remembering to log in and look.
• Assign ownership — one person (often HR, sometimes a founder at small companies) responsible for responding within a set window, so response quality doesn't depend on who happens to see it first.
• Review on a set cadence even without alerts — weekly for most employers, more often during active high-volume hiring, since that's when review volume tends to spike alongside application volume.

How to respond to negative reviews

A negative review response has one job: show a reasonable candidate reading it later that the company took the feedback seriously, without getting defensive, argumentative, or dismissive in public.

1. Acknowledge the specific concern raised — don't respond with a generic "thank you for your feedback" that could apply to any review on any company's page.
2. Avoid arguing details in public, even if the review is inaccurate or one-sided. A public back-and-forth reads worse than the original review, regardless of who's technically right.
3. State what's changed or being worked on, if something genuinely has — vague promises with no substance read as damage control, not resolution.
4. Offer a private channel to continue the conversation if appropriate, especially for specific, addressable complaints, without demanding the reviewer identify themselves publicly.
5. Keep it short. A long, defensive response draws more attention to the review than a brief, measured one does.

Here's a response template that holds up across most negative-review scenarios, adjusted for specifics:

"Thanks for sharing this — we take feedback like this seriously and want to understand what happened here. [One specific line addressing the actual concern raised, or noting a change already underway.] If you're open to it, we'd welcome the chance to talk this through directly at [contact/email]. We're always working to do better by our team."

Swap the bracketed line for something specific to the actual complaint — vague filler in that spot defeats the point of responding at all.

Responding by scenario: do's and don'ts

Not every negative review calls for the same tone. A few common scenarios and how to handle each:

The through-line across every row: public responses are for candidates reading later, not for winning an argument with the original reviewer. Keep that audience in mind and the tone mostly takes care of itself.

Timing matters too. A response posted within a day or two reads as attentive. One posted three months later, after the review has already been sitting there unanswered, reads as an afterthought regardless of how well it's written — candidates browsing the page can usually see both dates side by side.

Improving your rating authentically (not gaming it)

• Ask for reviews consistently, not reactively — build it into a normal touchpoint like an onboarding survey or an anniversary check-in, not a scramble after a bad review posts.
• Never offer incentives tied to leaving a positive review specifically — both platforms treat that as a policy violation, and it undermines the reviews' credibility even if it's never caught.
• Fix the actual root causes behind recurring negative themes before trying to outweigh them with volume — a flood of new reviews doesn't erase a real pattern candidates will notice regardless.
• Let your employer value proposition guide what you're actually delivering day to day — reviews tend to reflect whether the EVP is real or just marketing copy.

A related habit worth building: keep your careers page and your review responses telling a consistent story. Candidates cross-reference both, and a careers page promising flexibility while unanswered reviews complain about rigid scheduling is a mismatch candidates notice immediately.

LinkedIn Talent Solutions research has made a similar point from the talent-attraction side: candidates increasingly weigh employer reputation as part of the overall decision to apply, not as a footnote checked after an offer is already on the table. A rating built honestly over many ordinary review cycles carries more weight with that audience than one built through a single push for reviews after a good quarter.

When a review crosses a line

Most negative reviews are ordinary dissatisfaction and deserve the response approach above. Occasionally one crosses into something else — a fabricated claim, a violation of platform content policy, or content that's actually defamatory rather than just critical.

• Both Glassdoor and Indeed have flagging or reporting processes for reviews that violate their content guidelines — use that process rather than arguing publicly in the response.
• Reserve flagging for genuine policy violations, not simply for reviews you disagree with. Over-flagging tends to get ignored by platform moderators and wastes the tool's credibility for when you actually need it.
• If a review raises a genuine legal or safety concern rather than a satisfaction complaint, that's a matter for HR or legal counsel directly, not a public review response.

Whatever the scenario, the discipline is the same: monitor consistently, respond like a person, and let a pattern of honestly earned reviews accumulate over time. That combination does more for your rating, and for the candidates deciding whether to trust it, than any single clever response ever will.

Frequently asked questions

Glossary

Employer profile

The claimed company page on a review platform like Glassdoor or Indeed that allows an employer to respond to reviews and post updates.

Review response

An employer's public reply to an employee or candidate review, visible to anyone browsing the company's profile.

Flagging / reporting

The platform process for reporting a review that violates content policy, as distinct from simply disagreeing with it.

Review velocity

The rate at which new reviews accumulate over time, which affects how quickly a rating shifts and how recent the page appears to visitors.

Reputation signal

Any publicly visible indicator — reviews, ratings, social presence — that candidates use to judge a company before applying.