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While Glassdoor has its uses in providing transparency into companies, if you are looking to hire employees, we recommend taking our free course on posting your first job. You’ll learn about writing an excellent description, how to look great over other companies, and what to do beyond hiring someone.
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If you have Googled any job title or salary, you likely came up with results from Glassdoor.
You may feel like you are missing out on something for not having your company listed on the website.
In this Glassdoor review we will discuss what the platform actually is, how they make money, give a brief overview of what the platform entails, and whether or not it’s good for posting your help wanted ads.
What is Glassdoor?
Glassdoor is a website where employees get to have their say about their employers by leaving reviews of working of their company, what working there is like, and what the pay is like.
A big problem with most job listings is that people don’t list the salary range they plan on offering for the job. This creates confusion, and so people have to Google the position and the expected salary. This is where Glassdoor reviews usually appear in search results.
Glassdoor is also meant for employers to be able to showcase why people should want to work for their company. This would be your chance to show off your company culture, perks of working for you, your mission, and the awesome people that make up your workforce.
You will be able to post company updates to help stay engaged with site visitors, and even respond to reviews that people post about working for, or with, your business.
How Does Glassdoor Make Money?
Glassdoor is able to make money by charging for different levels of control over your company profile.
You can get started for free, but you won’t have a lot of control over what you can do, and they will showcase competitors jobs on your profile.
Your free account allows you to add your company description and mission, request and respond to reviews, and gives you access to basic analytics.
While prices are not listed on their website, Glassdoor begins to charge you with their Standard plan.
With this package you are able to add custom content to your profile, feature glowing reviews, get different ratings for different job titles and locations, and get better analytics through a keyword analysis of reviews.
The highest package is known as Select. With this package you will be able to see how you stack up against your competitors on the platform, build out multiple affiliated profiles for your company, get deeper insights into your audience and who is seeking out your company, and targeted ad campaigns.
With both paid packages you get the ability to have your jobs appear on competitors profiles that aren’t paying to have them removed. This may be a good thing for you if you can afford to pay, but not so good if you are only sticking with the free account.
You Have to Pay To Play
Glassdoor’s main objective is to provide transparency into companies that, for some odd reason, like to hide details about the positions they have, their interview process, their benefits packages, and the salary range that can be expected.
Hence the name Glassdoor. Being able to see better into what a company has to offer.
That said, any employee who has issue or praise can go to Glassdoor and write a review about your company or positions within your company.
In order to keep providing information and keep their database relevant, Glassdoor will create a profile, without your permission, and list the information provided by the reviewer.
They also will not take a profile down upon request as part of their mission to be open and transparent. This is good for job seekers, as transparency is important.
The problem is that if you are a company with a disgruntled employee, you now have a bad review on a website that makes you pay to not have competitor jobs listed on your profile page. You can create a free account and respond to the review, but once you have a profile, competitors can pay to take advantage.
Should I Post My Open Positions on Glassdoor?
In September of 2019, Glassdoor launched a partnership with Indeed to be able to allow you to post jobs to the Indeed platform and link them to Glassdoor.
This means you need two separate accounts. One on Indeed to post jobs, and one on Glassdoor to manage your company profile.
If you decide to pay for and manage your Glassdoor account, it is likely worth it to get your jobs listed there as well. Just keep in mind you will also have to pay Indeed if you want to boost your jobs to get them in front of more top candidates.
Having Two Platforms… or One That Works
The goal of Glassdoor is to shed transparency on a businesses’ inner workings, but you can skip the platform and list your company on a better job platform.
Compared to Indeed (where you have to list your jobs for Glassdoor), ZipRecruiter does a better job at searching out quality candidates for you, and allows better pre-screening to help save you wasted time on unqualified candidates.
Start by listing your first job for free with ZipRecruiter and your job will be blasted out to over 100 job boards with the click of a button.
If you create a job description that encapsulates your awesome company culture and mission, sets the right expectations for what the job consists of, and don’t hide your salary range, there is no reason that you can’t do well on ZipRecruiter compared to using Glassdoor.
You also won’t be pressured into paying to keep competitors at bay. One simple subscription payment allows your full control over finding candidates that are right for your company, and you won’t have to be paying 2 platforms to get results.
My Overall Glassdoor Review
I love the overall mission of Glassdoor in providing transparency into businesses and their hiring processes.
I can’t count how many times I have passed on a job because salary isn’t listed in the application. By setting salary expectations and having some insight into the hiring process of a company, you alleviate some worry and wasted time by knowing what is really going on instead of having anxiety having to wonder.
That said, I’m not really fond of them allowing competitors to advertise jobs on your free profile, or that you have to pay to get rid of that feature.
I’m also not a fan of having to manage 2 different platforms by having to post jobs on Indeed first and linking them with Glassdoor. This process seems a bit cumbersome.
Glassdoor was born out of a need for people to have better insight into companies, because they try to hide too much in the offset.
If you just be more open with potential hires by setting expectations early and writing a great job description, you will alleviate a lot of this issue, and the need for Glassdoor.
For my Glassdoor review I give the company 3.5 stars. They get good ratings for their mission, but lose some points for their payment structure and job posting process.
For something a little more straightforward, you should check out ZipRecruiter for free.
