Appearance or reality? Monitoring of employer branding in public network space: the Glassdoor case

Abstract

To what extent does Employer Branding (EB) express the real‐life company working environment or merely constitutes a well‐orchestrated organizational image? After reconstructing its significance and impact on the managing of the human resource cycle (recruitment, commitment, and retention) this study describes three ways of monitoring EB: internal, professional and public control. They each make use of a variety of tools in order to assess the extent to which the appearance of the employer corresponds to an authentic reality. Then, there is a presentation of the features and critical issues of a case of public EB control: Glassdoor.com. More specifically, this is followed by descriptions of the structure, services and critical implications of the crowdsourcing‐based platform of Glassdoor.com (retaliatory, improper, frivolous and illusionistic utilizations). Implications which may affect the platform’s validity as a monitoring tool of EB. The article ends with several considerations regarding the use of the site as a research‐ tool. Research sources: literature reviews, Glassdoor‐site analysis, specialized web‐ journals, social‐media, studies that used Glassdoor for research purposes. Method: theoretical and empirical data‐processing.