Courtesy Glassdoor.com
Job seekers looking for another source of information and advantage in performing their due diligence on a potential employer should review Glassdoor.com. Glassdoor.com bills itself with the tag line “see what employees are say.” They further describe their site as a “free inside look at over 21,000 companies.” Essentially Glassdoor.com is a site where employees can “anonymously” post reviews, ratings, and salaries for their employer.
“Give to Get” Model
Glassdoor’s reviews, ratings, and salary information is completely free to any job seeker-on one condition. In order to access site information, you must be willing to write a review, rating, or give salary information on a previous employer or current employer.
Glassdoor’s Credibility: Am I Just Paranoid
Glassdoor’s due diligence in attempting to validate all anonymous reviewers:
“We require our users to verify their account via email before their posts are available to other users. This verification allows us to put measures in place to help identify suspicious users or posts (even if those cases are the exception rather than the rule). These measures, combined with an active employee community and our commitment to review every post before it appears on the site, allow us to have confidence that our information is really from the employees.”
With the current controversy swirling around business review site Yelp.com, it is difficult for me to place complete trust in reviews, ratings, or salary figures. Yelp has been accused of faking reviews, writing falsified reviews, pressuring sales tactics and retribution via bad reviews, and a number of other unsavory business practices.
- What keeps disgruntled employees from posting biased possibly untrue reviews or ratings?
- What keeps paranoid job seekers from “misstating” their salaries or reviews in an attempt to dampen interest in their company from job seekers?
- What keeps company management from reviewing their companies with the highest of ratings and reviews as a form of public relations that match their perception but fail to meet reality?
Glassdoor’s Credibility: This is a Great Tool!
If job seekers beginning to look for advantages that will help them during the interview process, can believe the information at Glassdoor.com, then this site becomes a huge advantage and tool. The benefits of Glassdoor:
- Salary information provides job seekers a base starting point so that they can be as competitive as possible in their willingness to work with an employer’s budget
- Ratings information can foreshadow possible internal communication problems, leadership issues, or other aspects of a business that signals it’s impending downturn. These ratings could save a job seeker time
- Reviews provide a job seeker the chance to look “internally” at how happy employees seem to be in their workplace, satisfaction with their job expectations, and the ability to surmise management styles and work place communication that effects every person’s success
Glassdoor.com Tools
- Salary Index: This internal search engine gives job seekers a look at salaries from dozens of industries, niches, and regions around the country
- Review Index: This internal search engine gives job seekers a look at reviews from anonymous employees, both good and bad, about their employer.
- Learn More: This page describes their due diligence process, how to use the site, FAQ on Glassdoor.com, and tips
Conclusion: Use Glassdoor.com to Your Advantage
I believe that Glassdoor.com offers job seekers an opportunity to see inside the organizations they are targeting in their job search. Like any anonymous information, users should use their best judgement. With that said, Glassdoor.com is an important and even vital tool for any job seeker looking for an advantage.
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GlassDoor is an untrustworthy website. GlassDoor solicits paid content from companies advertising job postings and it therefore has a fiduciary interest in supporting the agendas of those companies. That means that critical reviews are suppressed for companies that pay to advertise on GlassDoor, while they are not suppressed for companies that do not.
Thanks for your input, Naranja. We have heard similar reports for Yelp, which we mentioned in the article, yet we cannot confirm.
Unfortunately, I am so disappointed on Glassdoor, because they refused to post a review on a company that withdrew an accepted offer based on the birth place. So, they do not post reviews about discrimination.
I wrote a deservedly negative review to post on Glassdoor, and it was summarily rejected. The review wasn’t extreme or malicious; however, I was very clear about the issues that brought me to that point and the shortcomings of the firm in general. (I’m a writer for a living; I know how to do this.) When I asked the reason for the rejection, I was told “We expect reviewers to take the high road. When you question the integrity of an insitution’s corporate policies, you’ve violated that edict.” My translation: “Even if it’s warranted, we won’t let you talk badly about our friends.”
So no, Glassdoor isn’t above scrutiny. They have a lot of data to consider, but I would advise anyone using Glassdoor’s information to recognize it’s all biased and use it accordingly.
Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective.