Glassdoor, now one of the world’s largest job and recruiting sites, where current and former employees rate their employers, was founded in 2007.
You didn’t hear much about it in those early days. It certainly wasn’t a vital factor in most people’s job searches, apart from post-college new hires or young millennials. Now? Glassdoor has disrupted the job search space. Its profile has grown so much, hirers and recruiters can well assume that most every job candidate is looking to Glassdoor before making the decision to jump on board with a new job. Most candidates review it, employees review it, investors review it.
A few quick facts about Glassdoor, from last year’s most recent figures:
• Number of users: 57 million unique users each month
• Number of company reviews: 35 million
• Number of companies reviewed: 700,000
What it has also done, more than any other job search site before it, is create urgency around a company’s brand. That’s because current and former employees can post anonymously about what it’s really like to work there. It gives job seekers valuable insight into the culture of the company.
And while you can’t control every loose cannon or disgruntled employee, the overall picture of your company matters. Plus, since CEOs are reviewed, it’s personal. CEOs care about that rating. Glassdoor is, in effect, holding companies accountable for their behavior — how they treat employees, their policies and procedures, their decisions about hiring, firing, layoffs, and a whole host of other things. It means everyone, from supervisors to managers to the C-suite, needs to bring their A-game if they want to attract the best and the brightest.
That is driving change in HR, which has a bigger marketing component than ever. It is also changing the nature of the public relations business and creating opportunities for marketing agencies.
It requires companies to develop broad strategies and forces them to think hard about the employee experience from the candidate experience to onboarding to development all the way to offboarding. Yes, offboarding. It’s actually a big one. And it’s where a lot of companies are missing big time.
Consider the offboarding process, human interaction and benefits offered, and the critical role of the outplacement firm. Let’s face it, after a termination, the outplacement coaches are the only ones who have any significant relationship with the individual.
Like it or not, the same way we think about Yelp reviews for restaurants and Amazon reviews for products is likely how Glassdoor and related sites will shape how the talent marketplace thinks about the attractiveness of employment at a firm. And, lest we forget, the best talent has options!
