Glassdoor

Glassdoor
Type Private
Founded June 2007
Headquarters Sausalito, California, U.S.
Key people Robert Hohman, Rich Barton, Tim Besse
Industry Internet
Services Online employment
Slogan(s) Get hired. Love your job.
Website www.glassdoor.com www.glassdoor.co.uk
Alexa rank Decrease 597 (December 2015)[1]
Type of site Job search engine, Review Site
Registration Optional
Available in Multilingual
Current status Active

Glassdoor is an American website where employees and former employees anonymously review companies and their management.[2]

Founding

The company was cofounded in 2007 by Tim Besse, Robert Hohman, who serves as the company’s CEO, and Expedia-founder Rich Barton, who serves as the company’s Chairman.[3] The idea came from a brainstorming session between the two of them, when Hohman relayed the story of accidentally leaving the results of an employee survey on the printer while working at Expedia—when the two began to think about what would have happened if the results had gotten out into the public. The two hypothesized that if the material had indeed been revealed publicly, it could have been a service to those looking to make career decisions.[4] The company’s headquarters were established in Mill Valley.[5]

Website

Glassdoor launched its company ratings site in June 2008,[6] as a site that “collects company reviews and real salaries from employees of large companies and displays them anonymously for all members to see,” according to TechCrunch. The company then averaged the reported salaries, posting these averages alongside the reviews employees made of the management and culture of the companies they worked for—including some of the larger tech companies like Google and Yahoo.[7] The site also allows the posting of office photographs and other company-relevant media.[8]

The site later also began focusing on CEOs and workplaces, as well as what it is like to work at jobs in general.[9] Employee reviews are averaged for each company.[10] Glassdoor ratings are based on user-generated reviews. Each year Glassdoor ranks overall company ratings to determine its annual Employees’ Choice Awards, also known as the Best Places to Work Awards.[11] The website verifies that each review of a company comes from real employees "through technological checks of e-mail addresses and through screenings by a content management team," according to Glassdoor spokesman Scott Dobroski .[12] The company has stated that it rejects about 20% of entries after screening.[13] Rules for posting reviews are different for smaller companies than they are for larger companies in order to preserve the anonymity of people in close departments.[14]

In 2010 Glassdoor released a fee-based program that it calls "Enhanced Employer Profiles", which allows employers to include their own content on Glassdoor profiles, like executive biographies, classifieds, social media links, and referrals.[15] The company also allows users to post potential job interview questions that might be asked by certain companies, acquired by interviewed job candidates,[16] in addition to other information that can be used to prepare job applications.[17] The reputation a company has on Glassdoor has also been found correlative by Case Western Professor Casey Newmeyer.[18] It has also been used to vet potential client companies.[19]

In 2014 the company hired Adam Spiegel as its CFO, with the intention of preparing for an eventual IPO.[3] As of 2015, the site had 30 million users from 190 countries and corporate clients including one third of all Fortune 500 companies.[8] The year, Glassdoor began creating localized websites and mobile apps for different national jurisdictions, such as Germany.[20]

Reports

Glassdoor produces reports based upon the data its users generate through their posts. These reports have been on topics including work-life balance,[21] CEO pay-ratios,[22] lists of the best office places and cultures,[23] and the accuracy of corporate job searching maxims.[24] Data from Glassdoor has also been used by outside sources to produce estimates on the effects of salary trends and changes on corporate revenues.[25] Glassdoor also puts the conclusions of its research of other companies towards its own company policies.[8] In 2015 Tom Lakin produced the first study of Glassdoor in the United Kingdom, concluding that Glassdoor and similar sites were seen as more trustworthy sources of information than career guides or official company documents.[26][27]

Financing

The company received its first financing in 2008, receiving $3 million in funding, before launching its website.[5] In 2012 Glassdoor received $20 million of venture capital, taking its total outside funding to $42.2 million.[28] The following year, the company raised an additional $50 million.[29] In 2015 the company raised an additional $70 million, in an investment round led by Google Capital, giving the company a valuation of just short of $1 billion. The total of investment at this point was $160 million.[3]

Awards

In April 2013, Glassdoor won a Red Herring North America Award for Social Media Innovation.[30]

References

  1. ↑ "Glassdoor.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  2. ↑ Associated Press, March 29, 2013, cbc.ca, Employees rate their employers, CEOs on Glassdoor
  3. 1 2 3 Deborah Gage. "Google Capital Leads $70 Million Round for Job Review Site Glassdoor". WSJ.
  4. ↑ "The Art of ‘Something From Nothing’". The New York Times. April 14, 2014.
  5. 1 2 Duncan Riley (March 27, 2008). "Stealth Startup Glassdoor.com Takes $3 Million Series B". TechCrunch. AOL.
  6. ↑ Erik Schonfeld, TechCrunch, June 10, 2008, At Glassdoor, Find Out How Much People Really Make At Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, And Everywhere Else.
  7. ↑ "At Glassdoor, Find Out How Much People Really Make At Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, And Everywhere Else.". TechCrunch. AOL. June 10, 2008.
  8. 1 2 3 "What Glassdoor Has Learned From Seven Years Of Studying Other Companies". Fast Company. July 17, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Job Reconnaissance".
  10. ↑ "Good Company".
  11. ↑ Rob Grant, Daily Telegraph, April 8, 2013, Facebook voted world's best employer
  12. ↑ Vanessa Wong, BusinessWeek, March 18, 2013, Why Employees Like Zuckerberg (and Other Popular CEOs)
  13. ↑ Calgary Herald, April 10, 2013, Website lets workers rate their bosses anonymously
  14. ↑ Sarah K. White (June 4, 2015). "How Glassdoor’s reviews help you find your dream job". CIO.
  15. ↑ Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2010, Employers Sound Off on Company Review Site
  16. ↑ Julie Balise (October 14, 2015). "16 unusual interview questions you may face at Facebook". SFGate.
  17. ↑ "Mindsharing".
  18. ↑ "CEO awful? Great culture? Pittsburgh-area firms among those graded on Glassdoor". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
  19. ↑ Bob Corlett (June 3, 2015). "Are you suffering from 'Glassdoor angst'?". The Business Journals.
  20. ↑ "Germany Glassdoor Launches Localised Website and Mobile App". Staffing Industry.
  21. ↑ "Glassdoor: Of the top 25 U.S. jobs for work-life balance in 2015, 10 are in the tech industry - VentureBeat - Business - by Emil Protalinski". VentureBeat.
  22. ↑ Maxwell Murphy. "Glassdoor Offers Sneak Peek Into Coming CEO Pay-Ratio Disclosures". WSJ.
  23. ↑ Julie Balise (October 7, 2015). "These are the 10 coolest offices, Glassdoor says". SFGate.
  24. ↑ "New Glassdoor Survey Suggests "It's Who You Know" Is Only Slightly True For Job Seekers". Fast Company. August 12, 2015.
  25. ↑ Shannon Pettypiece (October 20, 2015). "Wal-Mart's Raises to $10 an Hour May Cost Retailers $4 Billion". Bloomberg.com.
  26. ↑ Tom Lakin. "Why you shouldn't ignore Glassdoor".
  27. ↑ Becky Frith. "Glassdoor trusted more than employers".
  28. ↑ Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, October 31, 2012, Glassdoor Raises $20M Series D To Expand Internationally
  29. ↑ "Career community Glassdoor raises $50M to ramp up international expansion - VentureBeat - Deals - by Devindra Hardawar". VentureBeat.
  30. ↑ "2013 Top 100 North America: Winners". Retrieved November 29, 2015.

External links

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