1. Introduction
Employer branding is “the functional, economic, and psychological benefits that are provided by employment and identified with the employing company” [
1], and currently, the benefits are also called employee value proposition (EVP) [
2], which enables an employer to differentiate and promote itself from the other competitors to potential and current employees [
3]. Effective employer branding can reduce talent acquisition costs, improve labor relationships, and increase employees’ engagement with employers [
4]. Therefore, a distinct and desirable employer branding positioning as an employer of choice has been recognized as a competitive strategy and critical resource for an organization’s sustainability [
5,
6,
7]. Employer branding has two main target audiences: internal employees (current and former employees) and external job candidates [
8]. External job candidates have limited information about an employer for which they have never worked, and they may perceive an employer’s branding based on incomplete information through interaction during the job application process [
9] and/or word-of-mouth (WOM) from the internal employees connected with them [
10].
Scholars have suggested that internal employees are the best indicators of employer branding based on what they encounter, observe, or feel in an organization [
11], which is called employee experience [
12]. Employers can collect and analyze the information on employee experience from exit interviews, employee surveys, or other closed-door channels to understand the needs of internal employees and strengthen external job candidates’ perception of employer branding based on their needs [
12]. However, employers have difficulty accessing natural information beyond closed-door channels, because internal employees may fear negative repercussions if they share something improperly [
13].
As the popularity of social media enables users to create and share content through virtual networks or communities [
14], an increasing number of internal employees are anonymously sharing their experience (including satisfactory and dissatisfactory employment stories) online, and an increasing number of external job candidates read these stories and understand prospective employers before applying for jobs or accepting job offers [
3,
13]. Dabirian et al. [
13] adopted revised “crowdsourcing”—use of large groups of individuals towards the completion of a specific task [
15]—and defined this type of social media as a crowdsourced employer branding platform that enables job applicants to transparently research employer brands according to anonymous ratings and comments from their internal employees, which are perceived to be more credible information sources without self-interest in promoting employers [
16], such as Glassdoor [
8]. A study found that crowdsource ratings are likely to converge with subject matter experts’ judgement [
17]. As one of the world’s largest crowdsourced employer branding platforms with 50 million visitors per month, 86% of job candidates research company reviews and ratings for different employment attributes of a company before applying, according to Glassdoor in 2020 [
18].
Glassdoor has 60 million employee reviews covering over 1 million companies across 200 countries [
18]. Glassdoor offers participants reviews on CEO approval ratings, positive business outlook, whether they would recommend to a friend, and different employer ratings, including overall rating, culture and values, work–life balance, senior management, compensation and benefits, and career opportunities, which can reflect different facets of EVP for employer branding. The overall rating reflects overall job satisfaction, while the other specific ratings reflect facet-level job satisfaction (e.g., satisfaction with culture and values, work –life balance, etc.) [
19]. Since job satisfaction reflects employees’ experience with their employers, the different crowdsourced ratings on Glassdoor would be valid indicators for employer branding by overall and different facets of EVP [
8].
As suggested by some pioneering studies on Glassdoor or other crowdsourced employer branding social media platforms [
8,
13,
19,
20,
21], effective employer branding leads to positive electronic WOM (e-WOM) endorsement, leading to the company being perceived as a good place to work, whereas negative e-WOM has the opposite effect. These significant changes in terms of employer branding through crowdsourcing raise the first research question in this project: can employer ratings truly predict WOM endorsement by internal employees (recommend to a friend)? Although customer satisfaction and recommendation behavior are intercorrelated in the marketing field, a satisfied customer may not perform recommendation behavior. That is why many marketers set the net promoter score as an independent performance indicator in addition to customer satisfaction ratings [
22]. As well as in human resources, a satisfied employee may not recommend his or her employer to their friend. Therefore, it is necessary to examine whether employer satisfaction can drive recommendation behavior for employer branding research [
8].
On Glassdoor, different employer ratings in specific attributes represent different EVP facets that may have different impacts on overall employer ratings. Since there are different ratings for employer branding, there should be a priority on which employers can focus [
13]. We proposed a second research question in this project: which EVP facets are more important for predicting overall employer ratings?
Past studies have found that traditional public media impact all aspects of employer brands, including familiarity and reputation (e.g., U.S. Fortune 500 companies), and familiarity and reputation drive organizational attractiveness for both internal employees and external candidates, because the ranking list may signal that companies have a higher degree of familiarity and better reputation, which can make employees (and potential employees) feel pride for being (or having ever been) a part of these companies [
23]. Therefore, how much the degree of familiarity and reputation ranked by the public on social media influence employer ratings ranked by internal employees would be a third research question in this project.
Other than ratings of a company by current or former job holders (reviewers), Glassdoor asks each reviewer to post a comment including three pros and three cons related to the employer within the last five years. Every post will be reviewed by the Glassdoor team before appearing on the site to maintain data quality [
18]. Any job holders who would like to review any job or company information on Glassdoor must complete the rating and posting process. Glassdoor uses sentiment analysis to retrieve the most popular text from comments about a company and highlights the keywords on the site for review. In other words, every reviewer can review any employers’ ratings and comments on Glassdoor when s/he completes a review, including rating and posting about a company for which s/he works/has worked. Accordingly, the last research question in this project is proposed: what are the most popular pros and cons comments that describe internal employees’ work experience?
Crowdsourced ratings about a product or service have been proved as a critical leading indicator for long-term success of an organization, because the e-WOM greatly influences customers’ acquisition and retention in the digital era [
22,
24,
25]. Understanding crowdsourced ratings about employer branding would be an important issue for organizational sustainability, because the e-WOM significantly affects talent acquisition and retention [
8,
21] that has been included in the new global environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting guide launched by NASDAQ in 2019 [
26].
This paper is structured as follows: we begin with a brief review of the literature on crowdsourced employer ratings on Glassdoor, with an emphasis on our four research questions. (Q1) Can employer ratings predict internal employees’ recommendations to a friend about a company as an employer of choice? (Q2) Which specific employer ratings can significantly predict overall employer ratings? (Q3) Is the U.S. Fortune 500 ranking associated with employer ratings? (Q4) What are the most popular pros and cons in posted comments for employer branding? Thereafter, we use Glassdoor’s data source in 2019 based on the U.S. Fortune 500 list of companies 2019 to perform data analytics. The results are presented and discussed, with the accompanying practical and theoretical implications regarding employer ratings through crowdsourcing on social media.