Here at OME, we’ve seen a significant increase in queries about Glassdoor over the past 12 months. We have been working with Glassdoor for the past five or six years, and have long seen the exciting possibilities that it offers — as well as the challenges it poses — and we’ve been enthusiastic advocates for our clients embracing both of these elements.
In that time we’ve seen the conversations about Glassdoor with our clients evolve in the fashion typical to game-changing industry developments: we introduce it to initially skeptical clients, educate them about its potential benefits, see the increasing client ‘buzz’ and encourage some early adopters. We’ve now helped to set up partnerships between Glassdoor and many of our clients, including Dyson, Lidl, New Look, TMF and the National Physical Laboratory, and if it is not yet as widely adopted as LinkedIn, Glassdoor is becoming a staple part of our discussions with major clients about their future candidate attraction plans and the management of their employer brand.
[Related: Post a job for free on Glassdoor Today!]
Our role at OME is to offer impartial advice to our clients about when they should be considering partnering with Glassdoor, and also helping them to make the most of its features, be it engaging with comments, creating bespoke company profiles for different types of audiences or making use of the mass of data available about their — and their competitors’ — employer brands. There is a classic objection about Glassdoor from some people: the fact that people are able to leave negative reviews. But we believe that it’s not possible to stop people from discussing your brand publicly online — in this sense, recruitment is just catching up with the rest of the world — and engaging with negative comments in a constructive way is just one of the keys to success.
But it’s important not to think about using Glassdoor primarily in a reactive way. As it continues to expand its presence in the UK, increasing numbers of current and former employees are talking about your brand here, and, more importantly, potential employees are seeing it as an important research tool, helping them to make informed choices about who they want to work for. They’re visiting your Glassdoor profile not only to read reviews and comments but to learn about your culture, your values, material benefits and opportunities for career progression. They are also looking for jobs and looking for opportunities to come and work for you. A Glassdoor profile is a shop window for your brand, and job seekers who have taken the time to find out more about you before they apply are always going to be higher quality candidates.
[Related: Hiring Informed Candidates On Glassdoor Boosts Retention & Can Save Thousands]
This leads to the question of what Glassdoor can offer in the context of a changing job board market. At OME we’re seeing the decline of vertical job boards and the increased domination of the active jobseeker market by generalist sites and aggregators. Despite the recent success in particular of aggregators, they still essentially offer the same experience to job seekers that job boards have always done, and there is little innovation in terms of offering new ways for employers to engage with their audience.
Glassdoor has the potential to offer both of these things. For the candidate, there is the wealth of employer information and reviews to help them make an informed choice about where they want to work. For the employer, there is a different kind of audience to be reached and engaged with — candidates who are well informed, and enthusiastic about your brand and your values. Time will tell if Glassdoor will be able to move into this space as well, but there is no doubt that there is a high-quality audience to tap into here.
Finally, there is the wealth of data that Glassdoor makes available, such as your changing ratings over time; the profiles of people who are visiting your page and applying for your jobs; summaries of what people are saying about your brand. All of this can be hugely valuable, not just for managing your profile on Glassdoor, but also for understanding more about how your overall brand is being perceived.
You’re welcome to get in touch with a member of the OME team to discuss Glassdoor (or anything else), so drop us a line!
Stephen Oliver is the Head of Account Management at OnlineMediaExperts (OME). This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse. Reprinted with permission.
