Glassdoor is the site Google always takes you to when seeking information about potential employers, particularly salary ranges for specific positions at a company. It aggregates information provided by current and former employees and delivers it to interested candidates, helping them know what to expect if they join a company.
Want to know how much a company pays for a role, the benefits, and remote work policies? Glassdoor offers the closest answers, provided by employees themselves.
It’s also a job board in its own right, connecting candidates to vast opportunities. What does Glassdoor offer, and how does it compare to rival sites? Where does it excel, and where does it still need improvement? I reviewed it extensively to answer these questions.
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Glassdoor: Plans and pricing
Glassdoor is free for job seekers. Anyone can create a Glassdoor account to scour through job postings and view information about companies. You can check it out by clicking here.
The only catch is that Glassdoor often requires giving details about your company to unlock complete information for other companies, so while end users don’t pay money, there’s a little price to be paid.
On Glassdoor, businesses can also create Employer accounts, which let them respond to employee reviews, access employee insights, and build a Glassdoor profile, among others. Creating an Employer account is free, but Glassdoor charges money to access certain features, mostly around branding and recruiting.
Paid subscriptions allow enhanced profile customization for businesses, including the ability to feature employee reviews, add high-resolution media content, publish profile updates, and create up to five branded "Why Work with Us?" tabs highlighting a value proposition, leadership, and mission.
Paid plans also let companies remove competitors' ads from their profile and, if they wish, promote their profiles on pages of competitors not subscribed to a premium plan. This part feels a bit like paying to game the Glassdoor system, but such is it. Likewise, paying businesses also get access to detailed engagement data and can compare ratings, review trends, and brand impressions against industry rivals.
Note that Glassdoor doesn’t offer standard subscription plans for businesses. Instead, interested companies can contact Glassdoor’s sales team for a custom quote.
Prices are known to start at $5,000 per year (and go up to $20,000+ for some large enterprises), a steep amount that doesn’t favor smaller and medium-sized businesses. I’d advise a subscription only for major enterprises with budgets large enough to justify it as a marketing and branding expense.
Glassdoor: Setup
Glassdoor has a simple setup process. Anyone can create an account using an email address. For a smoother process, you can sign up with an existing Google or Apple account.
Employers can also easily create accounts, but understandably, this takes longer because of stricter verification processes.
Firstly, you’ll need a corporate email address matching your company’s official domain. Then, Glassdoor’s team will manually review your employer application, and this can take up to 3 days (all Employer account creations are manually reviewed).
If approved, you’ll receive an email confirmation and can begin managing the business profile.
Glassdoor: Features
At its core, Glassdoor is a platform that connects job seekers with company insights and potential opportunities. Suppose you want to work for a firm. You likely want to know about its compensation structure, benefits, interview processes, and working environment. Glassdoor is the right place to get this information.
On Glassdoor, you can view anonymous, transparent reviews about a company from employees. From these reviews, you’ll learn about the company’s culture, work-life balance, and general working conditions.
However, strike a balanced view when reading these reviews. Check multiple reviews to get a fair summary, not focus too much on specific negative or positive reviews. People can have different experiences working with the same company, so one review shouldn’t make you conclude.
Compensation data is a key benefit of using Glassdoor. Employees submit salary data for their respective job titles and years of experience. You can then explore this crowd-sourced data to get a clue about what a company pays for your desired role. The data isn’t always 100% accurate, as compensation often differs between employees in similar roles at the same company, but it’s as close as you can get.
Employees also talk about their interview experiences on Glassdoor, particularly questions commonly asked during their interviews. When seeking a role, you can use this information to prep for your interview. Familiarity with the interview process gives you a leg up over other candidates.
On Glassdoor, employees also discuss various topics related to their companies. You can peek into these discussions to learn a lot about a company. However, beware of the usual hearsay lurking in anonymous, community-based discussions. Don’t conclude based on one or two posts. Instead, seek information from multiple sources to get a balanced opinion.
Glassdoor provides a job board for candidates seeking various roles. You can search through millions of job postings, with advanced search filters to get exactly what you want. You can also upload your resume to Glassdoor’s database and get matched to prospective employers. Glassdoor is a job board in its own right, competing with the likes of Monster and ZipRecruiter.
Glassdoor also offers valuable features for businesses. As a business owner or manager, a Glassdoor profile lets you showcase your company story, mission, awards, certifications, and perks. Many prospective employees use Glassdoor to seek information, so you can deliver the right information directly to them.
For instance, you can highlight what your company does, the benefits employees enjoy, and post photos of your cosy workplace. If your company has earned a “Best Place to Work” badge, you can prominently highlight it for prospective employees.
With employer accounts, you can also respond directly to (anonymized) employee reviews. This presents an opportunity to clarify situations highlighted in negative reviews in a reconciliatory tone, and to respond to positive reviews in an appreciative tone. Avoid combative responses, as they look unprofessional to prospective employees.
Employer accounts can also track key statistics like employee sentiment and page visitor behavior, and benchmark their performance against competitors. However, Glassdoor requires a subscription to access the most advanced analytics tools.
I think Glassdoor offers great value to both job-seekers and employers. Job-seekers can access opportunities and vast amounts of information about potential employers.
On the other hand, employers can create branded profiles to reach out to prospective employees and maintain a positive brand. However, for employers, Glassdoor locks many valuable features behind a paywall.
Glassdoor: Ease of use
Glassdoor gets a good score when it comes to user-friendliness. Despite its numerous features and complexities, the interface is arranged in a way that makes things easy to navigate.
Whether you’re searching for jobs, reading company reviews, seeking interview prep information, or scouring salary data, Glassdoor has distinct menus that you can easily switch between.
Similarly, when using an Employer account, Glassdoor also provides distinct menus that you can navigate from your dashboard. The platform helps by providing on-screen onboarding guides for first-time users. You can access Glassdoor from a web browser or download the iOS or Android smartphone app.
Glassdoor: Support
Glassdoor provides decent support resources. The official Help Center lists guides, how-tos, and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Glassdoor, making it the ideal go-to spot when experiencing issues.
I like that there are separate Help Centers for job-seekers and Employer accounts, an ideal arrangement because both interact with vastly different features. This way, you can easily find help for issues related to your account type.
Employers with paid subscriptions can contact Glassdoor’s support team via live chat. Job-seekers seeking direct help can fill out a support ticket and await an email response, which takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours.
Understandably, instant live chat support is restricted to businesses that pay thousands of dollars in annual subscriptions to maintain enhanced Employer accounts.
Glassdoor: The competition
Glassdoor has formidable competition as a job board, particularly Monster and ZipRecruiter. These rival platforms aggregate vast job opportunities and make them easy to scan through. Users can also upload resumes and get connected to fitting employers through these platforms.
However, Glassdoor outshines rivals when it comes to finding information about companies. It offers the broadest database of salary data, interview prep tips, and employee reviews amongst fellow job portals.
Glassdoor: Final verdict
If you want to learn about prospective employers, Glassdoor is the go-to spot. It provides a vast amount of information about companies and the roles you’re interested in. It’s also a good hub for finding job opportunities, although it has formidable competition in this sector.
Employers can also build a strong Glassdoor profile to boost their reputation with prospective employees, but Glassdoor demands money to access some valuable tools that help them do so.
For more picks, we've tested the best recruitment platforms and the best job sites.
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