Glassdoor has quickly become a go-to resource for job seekers, similar to how Trip Advisor is used for reviews on hotels and vacation spots. It allows individuals to research a company’s work culture before applying for a job. As a result, companies are placing increasing importance on maintaining a positive reputation on the site. Glassdoor’s current valuation of over 1 billion dollars illustrates the significant impact it has had on the job market.
What makes this site unique is that employees can secretly post a review about the company where they are currently working. This gives new job seekers a basic idea about the employer, including the work environment, ability to be promoted, pay, and management styles. Naturally, companies are focusing on increasing their Glassdoor ratings to entice qualified candidates.
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote an article about how companies may be manipulating ratings on sites like Glassdoor. Glassdoor reviews are generally trusted by the site’s users. However, recently many companies have started manipulating these reviews to improve their brand image. It is very easy to manipulate these ratings if a company is not happy with the content that is being published about them.
A Glassdoor Review can easily be manipulated. Companies can inflate reviews and ranking scores in a number of ways. The point is, it’s happening way more than the average job seeker realizes. That’s why these review sites are not accurate and should not be overly analyzed when deciding to apply for a companies position.
For example, last summer, unhappy workers from Guaranteed Rate Inc. posted many negative reviews on Glassdoor. This decreased the company rating from 5 to 2.4, causing a lot of damage to the company’s image. To fix this bad publicity, their CEO pressured employees to post positive reviews. Soon after, Glassdoor was flooded with hundreds of 5-star reviews. This boosted their ratings from 2.6 to 4.7, proving how simple it is to inflate rankings on Glassdoor.
Many companies have used similar practices. If a workplace has a huge spike in positive reviews over a short amount of time, then there are probably false comments being added to increase ratings.
Glassdoor currently receives more than 100 million page views per month. As a trusted source for employment information, they need to do serious work to implement a process that vets their review content. In some cases, they try to verify the reviews by themselves with more than 5-10% of reviews getting deleted because they are either done by fake accounts or contain spam content. However, this is not nearly enough to combat the overall problem.
If a company has low ratings, then it will discourage new talent from applying there. This can affect the company’s recruiting metrics and discourage people from applying to roles that they may be well suited for and enjoy. Negative reviews of the business can be a very small subset of opinions within the workplace and may even be retaliation against one person.
Many companies, like SpaceX and Guaranteed Rate Inc, encourage their loyal workers to leave a positive review. The goal is to be placed on the “Best places to work” list by inflating these rankings. This label helps them recruit new talent because people trust in the validity of the content. However, these rankings don’t necessarily accurately reflect the actual work space.
Glassdoor has responded to such claims by explaining that certain spikes happen due to mass hiring of new employees. They also admit that internal encouragement can be a reason for certain spikes. A major spike in ratings occurs in October, which is one month before the “Best places to work” award is announced. This shows how companies are purposely inflating their rankings to get the sought after label.
Glassdoor has provided a medium where employees can raise their voice. They can post negative reviews about their workplace without worrying about backlash from their employer. They can also write positive reviews if they believe that others would benefit from gaining employment at their workplace. But, users need to be careful while selecting a new workplace based on Glassdoor ratings. It’s better to read both positive and negative reviews to get a balanced view.
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