A review is basically structured feedback about someone's work. It can be very indepth and detailed, like the dreaded "performance review", or it can be as simple as a sentence or two and a rating. With review templates, we give you the flexibility to ask for and give reviews in pretty much any format you like.

Technically, there is no difference. You can just think of a review as structured feedback, meaning it is organized into topics that are meaningful to the aspect of your work that is being commented on. You can also think of feedback as being typically private, only between two coworkers, while a review may be shared via your profile.

There are a few differences. First off, a testimonial is, practically by definition, a positive endorsement of someone. There's nothing wrong with that, but everyone understands that it is all about singing someone's praises, so it has limited value. With our review and feedback functionality, you can get a more realistic and complete picture of your work performance. Potential employers want to know about weaknesses as well as strengths - it shows that you are human and are working on improving yourself.

Secondly, Coworkers.com gives you the ability as a reviewer to remain anonymous. This is important because it encourages honesty.

Finally, we give you the flexibility to either keep your reviews private, or share them via your profile. Sometimes you just want to know "how did I do on that presentation yesterday?", and other times you want to tell the world, "look at what my coworkers are saying about me."

Your rating is the average of the public, confirmed reviews that have been submitted about you by verified users. To be more specific:

• Every review (feedback) is assigned a score of 1-10. Those that meet the criteria below are averaged to determine your rating.
• A public review is one that the reviewer has marked as public, not private (only visible to you).
• A confirmed review is one that you have looked at and marked as confirmed. Until and unless you confirm a review, it is never visible to others, and it has no effect on your rating.
• A verified user is one who has registered with Coworkers.com and we have verified by email address. Reviews submitted by unverified (not logged in) users are not applied to your rating, and they cannot be seen by others.

Note that your rating is only visible to others if you have a public profile.

No, we provide a safeguard against this. Reviews and feedback about you are never displayed to other users unless you confirm them. You also have the option of simply using Coworkers.com in "private" mode, ensuring that nothing about you is publicly exposed (see the profile FAQ).

When someone submits a review about you, whether you asked for it or not, you are the first person who gets to see it. If you feel that it is invalid or unfair, you can dispute it, which means that it will not be seen by anyone else. However, you may receive a review that is valid, yet contains some negative points. While you can of course dispute the review, we recommend that you confirm the review and allow others to see it. This shows that you are aware of the areas of your work that require some improvement. Employers like to see honesty, balance, and motivation. And if you receive a more positive review at a later point in time, you now have demonstrable evidence of your professional growth!