How Candidate Experience Impacts Your Glassdoor Reviews (and What to Do About It)

As the talent market becomes more and more competitive, candidate experience has become one of the strongest indicators of employer branding. Every touchpoint of the candidate journey becomes part of a story candidates share with others. And unlike a decade ago, these stories rarely stay private.

According to a LinkedIn study, 72% of candidates who have a negative experience share it online or with their network. Meanwhile, 83% of job seekers check company reviews on platforms like Glassdoor before they apply. The job seekers today, especially the Gen Z workforce, not only read several interview reviews to understand what the hiring process really feels like but also to understand workplace culture.

This means your candidate experience doesn't just influence whether someone accepts your offer. It directly shapes your public reputation, your talent pipeline, and your ability to hire competitively.

This blog explores how deeply intertwined candidate experience and Glassdoor reviews have become, what you can do to positively influence both, and how you can handle bad Glassdoor reviews.

How Candidate Experience Shapes Glassdoor Reviews

Candidate experience includes everything a job seeker comes across during the hiring process. It includes clarity of job descriptions, ease of application, timeliness of communication, fairness of interviews, and the way candidate rejections are handled.

Glassdoor captures all of this in its Interview Reviews section, where candidates evaluate the difficulty, professionalism, and overall tone of your process. Job seekers rely heavily on these same reviews to make decisions, and they read multiple reviews before forming an opinion about your company.

Therefore, with Glassdoor, a single unprofessional interview interaction can lead to a permanent negative candidate review, which can directly affect your future talent pipelines.

Why Poor Candidate Experience Affects Your Employer Brand

A negative candidate experience doesn't end when a candidate exits your process.

It pushes candidates away: Even highly motivated candidates reconsider when the experience feels disrespectful or chaotic. Studies show that job seekers today decline offers because of a poor candidate experience.
It creates lasting public criticism: Negative candidate reviews live online indefinitely and influence your brand long after the hiring moment. Interviewers who seem unprepared, processes that drag on for months, or communication that simply stops, these are exactly the issues candidates tend to document.

How a Strong Candidate Experience Strengthens Your Brand

Just as a negative experience can hurt you, a positive one can create tremendous value for your employer brand and attract top candidates.

Higher Offer Acceptance: A respectful, transparent, and efficient hiring process has a measurable impact. Two-thirds of candidates say a positive experience influenced their decision to accept an offer.
Better Long-Term Results: Organizations that consistently deliver positive candidate experiences see better retention and improvement in employee performance
Higher Quality of Hire: Glassdoor's own data indicates that companies that invest in improving candidate experience see a 70% improvement in quality of hire.
Positive Reviews and Referrals: Even rejected candidates become advocates when treated with respect. Many will reapply or refer others if they feel the process was transparent.

Good experiences create momentum. So, better reviews bring better applicants and eventually result in better hires.

How to Ensure a Positive Candidate Experience?

A good experience is not about perfection, but about will and purpose, and compassion. This can be operationalized using one helpful method, CARE Framework.

Clarity - Communicate timelines, expectations, and next steps clearly.
Accountability - Define responsibilities for recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers.
Responsiveness - Keep candidates informed, especially when timelines shift.
Empathy - Treat every candidate with dignity and understanding, regardless of outcome.

Here's how you can follow this framework effectively:

1. Streamline the Application Process

Long and complicated application is a big NO to the young workforce. Applicants often disregard application forms that request them to provide unnecessary information that they have already mentioned in their resume or those who are excessively difficult. Making sure that your application is easy, mobile friendly and considerate of the time of the candidates will have a good first impression.

2. Communicate Consistently and Don't Ghost

Poor communication is always among the greatest frustrations of the candidates. Misunderstanding and resentment can be avoided by having clear expectations, updating the candidates about the progress of the stages and giving small signs of appreciation, like telling the candidates that a certain stage is taking longer than it is expected to.

The Talentpool recruitment software has a dedicated candidate module that contains automated status updates and makes communication with candidates simple. The same platform also allows the candidates to contact their recruiters and re-post their updated resume in case of any future position. This is what assists recruiters in bridging the communication gap.

3. Provide Closure and Feedback

Candidates value clarity. Ending communication silently damages trust, while even a brief and thoughtful rejection note shows respect. For final-round candidates, a few lines of constructive feedback go a long way. Many cite feedback as a reason they continue to view a company positively despite not being selected.

4. Respect Candidates' Time

One of the most frequently used themes of negative candidate reviews is time. Excessive number of interview sessions, protracted intervals between sessions or lack of clarity in schedules might be frustrating. Being open about realistic expectations and going step-by-step is a great way to reassure the candidates and demonstrate your appreciation of their time.

5. Train Interviewers to Represent Your Company Well

Interviewers who are unprepared, have inconsistent questions, or use behaviors that make them feel dismissed usually find their way into review.

Make sure that the interviewers are aware of what to expect, have a look at the resumes prior to the interview, and provide a friendly atmosphere to allow the candidates to ask questions. This will have a direct positive impact on how the candidates would feel about your organization.

6. Showcase Your Culture Authentically

Applicants seek transparency. Before they sign an offer, they would like to get to know your environment, values, and expectations. Telling true stories, answering truthfully, and not polishing the stories too much makes them trust us and helps to balance the effect of negative candidate reviews.

7. Collect Feedback and Improve Continuously

Candidate experience isn't static. Post-interview or post-rejection quick surveys are useful in identifying underlying areas of friction. To make improvements, many companies are now measuring Candidate NPS or Candidate Satisfaction Scores. Reviews on Glassdoor usually provide trends that you should follow.

8. Use the Right Technology

Technology also plays a supporting role in improving candidate experience. A centralized, AI recruitment platform that accelerates the end-to-end recruitment process by automating updates, structuring feedback generation, or creating real-time visibility into pipeline stages can create a seamless experience that candidates recognize immediately.

How to Deal with Negative Glassdoor Reviews

Negative candidate reviews will still happen occasionally, even with improvements. It is how your company reacts publicly and internally that counts. The following are the steps you can take to handle bad Glassdoor reviews:

Respond, Don't Ignore

Candidates notice when companies engage professionally with reviews. 71% of Glassdoor users say their view of a company improves when the employer responds. A simple acknowledgment against bad Glassdoor reviews shows you value feedback and are committed to improvement.

Use a Calm, Empathetic Tone

A helpful response thanks the reviewer, acknowledges what they described, clarifies context without being defensive, briefly notes improvements or intentions, and invites private conversation if appropriate.

Look for Patterns

Instead of reacting to isolated comments, look for repeated themes. If multiple candidates mention long delays, confusing interview instructions, or inconsistent interviewer behavior, those issues deserve immediate attention.

Act on What You Learn

Training, restructuring steps, improving communication templates, or fixing technology gaps can directly reduce the types of complaints that appear in the bad Glassdoor reviews.

Encourage Balanced, Authentic Feedback

You should never solicit "positive reviews," but you can encourage employees to share their honest experiences. When satisfied, team members speak naturally, which helps create a fuller, more accurate picture for candidates researching your company.

How Talentpool Helps Improve Candidate Experience and Strengthen Your Glassdoor Reviews

Talentpool Recruitment Software is designed to fix the exact issues candidates mention in negative candidate reviews - slow processes, poor communication, inconsistent interviews, and lack of transparency. Here's how the platform takes care of your end-to-end recruitment process to deliver a superior candidate experience and, in turn, improve your employer branding and Glassdoor reviews:

AI-Powered Resume Parsing & Candidate Ranking: Talentpool recruitment software speeds up screening with AI resume parsing and ranks best-fit candidates with scores and summaries. Efficient resume management and screening improve time-to-hire by reducing delays, one of the most common complaints in negative reviews.
Real-time pipeline visibility: Everyone involved sees each candidate's status live. It eliminates the "I never heard back" problem that contributes to bad Glassdoor reviews.
Structured Feedback Collection: Standardized feedback forms and automated reminders ensure interviewers share feedback on time for every candidate.
Smart Alerts for Communication & Approvals: With the dedicated candidate module, Talentpool ensures updates go out promptly, reducing ghosting.
360-Degree Hiring Analytics: Leadership can track recruitment metrics, identify bottlenecks and candidate drop-off patterns, helping teams continuously improve the candidate journey.

Want to see how Talentpool recruitment software can help you improve your candidate experience during your end-to-end recruitment journey? Schedule a demo now!

Conclusion

Candidate experience is a public indicator of your company's values, culture, and professionalism. Every interaction with a job seeker can ultimately shape your Glassdoor presence, your reputation in the market, and your ability to attract exceptional talent.

The encouraging reality is that improving candidate experience is entirely within your control. By streamlining processes, communicating with care, respecting candidates' time, or responding thoughtfully to reviews, you build a hiring process that candidates appreciate even when they don't receive an offer. In an era where every candidate is a potential reviewer, that care does not just improve your Glassdoor ratings but also builds a reputation that sets you apart in a competitive talent market.