Four badges. None of them for sale.
Measured from what employers actually do on this board, recomputed every time anybody looks, and published here in numbers before anybody earns one.
Why this page exists at all. Plenty of organisations will sell a company a logo saying it is a great employer. We will not, and not only because it would be unlawful: it would be worthless. A badge anybody can buy tells you about their budget, not their behaviour.
So these four are facts, taken from data this board holds anyway. There is no entry, no fee, no tier and no sponsor. An employer cannot apply for one, cannot pay for one, and cannot ask us to overlook a month. They are recomputed, which means they can be lost, and a badge that could not be lost would be a lie with a date on it.
What these do NOT say
None of them says a company is a good place to work. We do not know that, we have no way to measure it from here, and anybody who claims to measure it from the outside is guessing at your life. Every badge on this page describes one thing only: how a company behaves on this board, towards people who apply through it.
Shows the pay
States what the job pays, on every advert
| The rule | Every advert placed in the last six months gives a rate or a salary. Not 'competitive', not 'negotiable', not 'depending on experience'. A number, or a band with two ends. |
| Threshold | 100 per cent of adverts |
| Minimum | at least 3 adverts in the window |
| Measured over | the last 6 months |
Why it is one of the four: Adverts that hide the pay get fewer and worse applications, and every candidate survey for twenty years has said the same thing. This badge costs an employer nothing except the habit.
Replies within two days
Answers applications in 48 hours or less, typically
| The rule | The MEDIAN time from an application arriving to the employer marking it answered is under 48 hours. Median rather than average, so one holiday cannot destroy it and one instant reply cannot rescue it. |
| Threshold | median under 48 hours |
| Minimum | at least 20 applications in the window |
| Measured over | the last 6 months |
Why it is one of the four: The commonest complaint in recruitment is silence. It costs nothing to fix and almost nobody does.
Everybody hears back
Nobody is left without an answer
| The rule | No application older than fourteen days is still sitting unanswered. Including the unsuccessful ones, which is the whole point of the badge. |
| Threshold | zero applications unanswered after 14 days |
| Minimum | at least 20 applications in the window |
| Measured over | the last 6 months |
Why it is one of the four: A rejection is not the thing that upsets people. Being ignored is. This is the badge candidates will care about most and employers will find hardest.
Says where the work is
Names the town, not just the region
| The rule | Every advert gives a real place: a town, a district or a postcode area. 'The Midlands' is not a place somebody can work out a bus route to. |
| Threshold | 100 per cent of adverts |
| Minimum | at least 3 adverts in the window |
| Measured over | the last 6 months |
Why it is one of the four: A vague location is the second commonest reason somebody does not apply, after hidden pay, and the reason is practical: they cannot tell whether they can get there.
The minimums, and why they are there
No badge is given on a small sample, whatever the percentage says. An employer needs at least 3 adverts in the window for the advert badges, and at least 20 applications for the reply badges.
Three out of three is not evidence, it is an accident, and a badge somebody relies on has to be better than an accident. Below the minimum we show nothing at all rather than something provisional.
How to lose one
Stop doing the thing. There is no appeal, because there is no decision: the badge is a sum, and the sum is done again every time the page loads. Nobody here can grant one as a favour or remove one in a temper, which protects an employer from us as much as it protects a candidate from an employer.
If you think one is wrong
Then one of us has the facts wrong and it is worth finding out which. Tell us and we will show you the adverts and the timings the sum used. If the data is wrong we will fix the data. What we will not do is change the number for one employer, because the moment a threshold moves for somebody, none of them mean anything for anybody.