Employee testimonials - the complete guide

You want to collect testimonials from your employees to use in your hiring process. These are called employee testimonials, and this is your complete guide to them. This simple, plain English guide will show you how and where to collect, manage, and share video and text testimonials from your employees.

Who is this guide for?

Whether you're a founder, HR manager, Head of People or recruiter, this guide will help you understand how to collect employee testimonials.

You can use employee testimonials on your website, and on your recruitment pages and platforms to drive more high quality job applications, and to help with onboarding new team members.

What is an employee testimonial?

An employee testimonial is an endorsement from member of your team saying what they like about working for your company. It can be in the form of text or video. Read on to understand how to collect them, and where to use them.

According to a report by The Talent Board, when asked to identify the most valuable recruitment marketing content, 24% of candidates said employee testimonials.

What questions should I ask my employees?

The quality of your testimonial is based on the quality and nature of the questions asked. Rather than just ask "What do you love about working here?" you can instead use a series of focused questions. Here are some great testimonial questions you can use when gathering employee testimonials.

The basics

• Name

• Job title

• Team

• How long have you worked here?

The questions

• What is the best thing about working for our company?

• What is one thing you wish you had known in your first week?

• What does a 'day in the life' look for you?

• What is your favourite perk, policy or process?

• What tools do you use day to day?

• What were your doubts about working here? How were they addressed?

• What have you learnt since working for our company?

• What are your colleagues like?

• What is a milestone or project at work that you're proud of?

How a good employee testimonial is written

As well as asking the right questions, it's really important you give your employee good direction regarding the tone, when you request a testimonial. Here's two important things to note:

It should be authentic

No corporate speak or business lingo, just plain and honest.

Written in the first person

The employee should be sharing their story, so make sure their testimonial is written in the first person.

How do I collect employee testimonials?

The most common way to collect employee testimonials is requesting them over an email. However, this means you'll have to manually sort through the responses, copy and paste them to a document, and manage them there. This also means that if you're collecting video testimonials your team member will have to film, upload, and send the video file to you manually.

More simply, you can use employee testimonial software like our free tool Senja to collect, manage and share testimonials in seconds. You'll get a beautiful collection form, employees can leave text and video testimonials in seconds, and you can share them anywhere you like without code.

Where can I share employee testimonials?

There are many places you can share employee testimonials. Here are the most common ones:

Your website recruitment pages

The obvious one! If you want to recruit better candidates, then you need to demonstrate that your company is a great place to work. First-hand employee experiences are authentic and engaging. So remember to share employee testimonials on your recruitment pages.

Your recruitment platforms

If you a recruitment platform like Workable, Greenhouse or Breezy, you can either embed employee testimonials, or link to your employee Wall of Love, to get more high quality candidates. Your competitors are already doing it, so don't get left behind. Videos can relay your team's energy, culture and humour more authentically than 100s of words.

Your new employee onboarding guides

Don't just use employee testimonials to recruit! Use them to ensure new hires have a great first week and onboarding experience. Share your team's top tips for a great first week in a video remix, and help your new hire get started.

Your social posts when recruiting

Posting new roles on social channels like LinkedIn? Include visual or video testimonials. Senja has a free Image Maker that can turn any testimonial into a beautiful image in seconds.

Link to an employee Wall of Love

More and more companies are creating a Wall of Love with customer testimonials to share with employees or on their website. But a new trend is to collect employee testimonials and turn it into an employee Wall of Love. You can then link to this in your email footer, social posts and recruitment pages.

As a remix video

Rather than feature each testimonial individually, you can remix the video testimonials into new videos. Here's some ideas for remix videos you could create:

• A day in the life of our company

• A day in the life of our team

• A day in the life of one person

• The tools we use

• Our top tips for your first week or first day

• My favourite perk

How do I add employee testimonials to my website?

Use your designer and developer

Once you've collected and edited your employee testimonials, you can have a designer add them to your website design (they normally do this in software like Figma), and a developer implement them. You should update your testimonials regularly.

Use a free tool like Senja

Alternatively, you can use our free tool Senja to create testimonial embeds and an Employee Wall of Love in seconds, and embed them anywhere you like.

Senja also lets you create stunning visual testimonials that you can post on your social channels, with our image maker.