Negative reviews can damage your company’s star rating and turn off a fair number of job seekers, according to research released today by Monster.

In a recent poll of 756 people in the US, Monster found the majority, 38%, would only apply to companies with at least a three-star rating (based on a five-star rating system). However, 33% of respondents reported they would never apply to a company with bad employee reviews.

On the bright side, 27% of people believe that despite bad employee reviews, they would still apply to a poorly rated company, hopeful that their experience will be better.

Monster provided some tips on how to curb negative online company reviews. They include:

• Head off public criticism with open internal communications.
• Create a trusted forum for in-person feedback. 
• Give reviewers other ways to contact the relevant people at your company. 
• Search for root causes of complaints. 
• Act on legitimate employee criticism.
• Consider asking the employee to remove their negative review.
• Ask the review site to remove over-the-line comments. 
• Defamation may warrant legal action.