5 Employee Testimonial Templates to Help You Recruit More

What Are Employee Testimonials?

Employee testimonials are employee stories and endorsements that employees make for the company they are working for. In an employee testimonial, your employee tells the viewer what it is like to work at your company.

The testimonials act as a form of social proof that encourages new job candidates to apply to the company: it must be great when current employees are praising it!

Employee testimonials can be used in recruiting campaigns or featured on your careers page continuously. They are more trusted by job seekers than branded videos.

In fact, research shows that job seekers trust current employees more than any other source when it comes to information about a company.

Different Formats for Employee Testimonials

Employee testimonials can be made in many different ways and forms, such as written testimonials and video testimonials. Here are some further examples:

Video	Video is a powerful tool to draw the future employee’s attention. The videos can be professionally produced or e.g. selfie testimonials.
Photos	It is always good to include a photo of the person whose words you are using in employee testimonials.
Reviews	There are third-party review sites such as Glassdoor that are dedicated to workplaces, and where people can give a review about their employer anonymously. The reviews are short and concise pieces of text combined with a star rating. You could copy this style for your own employee testimonials.
Quotes	If the employee testimonial is in text format, a quote is a nice way to highlight that the words are coming directly from the employee in question. Combine a quote with a photo of the employee.
Blog posts	Employee testimonials can be longer texts with photos and video. In that case, a blog post written by the employee is a great choice.
Articles	Some companies highlight employee testimonials in newsletters, career pages, and printed material, and formulate the testimonials to look like news articles where one employee is in the center of attention.
Social media takeover	Use your company’s social media and let the employees “hijack” the accounts. For example TikTok is a place where the staff can create goofy videos and highlight the cool work environment and culture that your company offers.

Who to Ask for Employee Testimonials?

If your company is small, you can ask everyone to make a testimonial or at least appear in one. A small staff can be featured in one video testimonial where everyone can tell something about their day and job in general.

If your company is larger and there is no time or need for lots of testimonials, make sure to promote diversity in the testimonials: different people from different departments. 

When you are looking for a specific group of employees, you of course want to build the recruitment campaign around those employees’ tasks and interests.

If you only ask for managers’ statements, you might lose the trust of job seekers, as CEOs and Executives are the least trusted people when it comes to the company as an employer.

Questions to Cover in Employee Testimonials

Here’s a list of questions to help you draft an employee testimonial:

• What is your name and occupation in the company?
• How long have you worked in the company?
• What has your career journey been like?
• What do your daily tasks look like?
• How would you describe the company culture?
• What is the best thing about working here?
• How would you describe your coworkers and managers?
• What is your team like?
• How has the organization helped with your professional development?
• How would you describe the growth opportunities in the company?

Pick as many or few of the following as suits your purpose. 

Depending on the context of the testimonial, the company might need a bit more introduction. In this case, briefly describe what the company is all about, such as the mission statement, vision, company values, and key characteristics of the organization.

Here are three best examples of testimonial request letters that you can modify to fit your needs.

How to Use Employee Testimonials?

Once you have collected employee testimonials, you need to bring them to the potential candidates’ attention.

You can feature testimonials on your social media account, your website, your career page, and even in printed materials that you can share e.g. at an employment event or fair.

Choose your platform according to where your prospective employees can most likely be found. Don’t forget that video testimonials can even be used in ads when promoting a job opening.

5 Employee Testimonial Examples to Use as Inspiration

Now that you have got to know the basics of employee testimonials, let’s look at some real-life employee testimonial examples that help you grasp the idea better.

Feel free to copy the ideas presented in the examples!

Example #1: Kraftvaerk

First example is a professionally produced employee testimonial video from Kraftvaerk.

In the video, Kraftvaerk as a business is first introduced, and then the work culture and atmosphere is discussed by different employees. The daily activities, both work and leisure are filmed and shown to the viewer.

The video highlights how happy the employees are and that they have a say about their daily routines. The interviewed employees tell what they love about working in the company.

Finally, the diversity and multiculturalism is highlighted by the woman who welcomes new employees in all of the languages that are spoken in the company.

The video testimonial is paired with a short article.

Click the picture to watch the whole video.

Video testimonials are extremely effective. You can choose to hire a production team to make an elaborate video like this or use remote video testimonial software to ease the process.

Example #2: SHAREit

SHAREit has shared many employee testimonials and other material on their Instagram page. 

This particular employee testimonial utilizes a photo and a quote. This type of testimonial is great for Instagram and other social media.

If you end up copying this idea, don’t forget to use your brand colors and logo.

Example #3: Porta King

This company in Missouri is riding the wave of TikTok’s popularity: if you are targeting young employees, the chances are that they are on TikTok.

The video starts with an introduction of Porta King and continues with short clips of employee testimonials. The video features employees of different ages and work tasks, and the personality of each employee shines through.

The people emphasize how they like their jobs, which benefits they have, and how well they have been treated in the workplace.

Click the picture for the full video.

Example #4: Volvo

Volvo features “portraits” of the employees that are similar to articles in a magazine. The testimonial has a title, a head-note with a quote, a photo and a few paragraphs of text.

This example really underlines the values of the company as attested by an employee. The story is written in first person, which gives the impression that the employee is directly speaking to the reader.

Example #5: PetSmart

This job review from Indeed regarding PetSmart is an example of a testimonial that an employee has given after the employment ended. The former employee highlights the culture and supportive atmosphere of the company.

Although many reviews on third-party review websites are negative, this is a good reminder that if you deserve good reviews, you will get them.

If you have positive reviews on third party websites, you can turn them into testimonials on your own website. In the next section I will tell how.

The Best Tool For Collecting Testimonials

Whether you want to collect written testimonials, video testimonials, or upload existing reviews from other websites, Trustmary is the tool to use.

With the simple-to-use software, you can gather testimonials in minutes and showcase them on your website automatically. 

The personalization possibilities of the software are vast. You can choose your own testimonial widgets out of our elegant templates, set custom automations, and much more.

Conclusion

If you want to attract the best talents in a situation where the workforce is difficult to find and candidates are suspicious of companies, let your existing employees tell their stories and add social proof to your recruiting campaigns.

This blog introduced some tips and templates for formulating your own employee testimonial.

Use them to ensure that your prospective candidates and future employees can get a real sense of what a typical day, week, month, and overall experience looks like at your company. This will ensure that you hire the top talent that is actually a good fit and like to work there for years to come.

Employee testimonials are trusted by job seekers, and there are various ways to make them work, like we noticed from the examples.

The key is to highlight company culture and working environment so that the candidates get good vibes from the workplace: after all, well-being at work is one of the most important aspects of today’s employer branding.

Pro tip: If you want to really step up your recruitment game, consider using a CRM system. It will help you track interactions with candidates and drive better results. For more info, check out this guide on finding and retaining the best employees using a recruitment CRM.

Next Steps

If you want to start gathering employee testimonials and customer testimonials, test out what Trustmary has to offer.

The software is easy to use, and after you have collected testimonials, you can embed them on your careers page, social media accounts, create pop-ups and test out other widgets.

You can even import reviews from other websites and add them to your testimonial page.

Further Reading

Trustmary Blog

• The Definitive Guide to Creating and Utilizing Video Testimonials
• Employee Testimonial Best Practices
• Employee experience as a resource for recruiting

Other Resources

• More examples of video employee testimonials (mostly in Finnish)
• The influence of employer rankings, employment experience, and employee characteristics on employer branding as an employer of choice by Gordhan and Jawahar, 2019.

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