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Glassdoor\'s management bench is deep and primarily for that reason, I am giving it 4-stars. Glassdoor aspires to be the TripAdvisor or Yelp of employment, and of the three online employer sites I\'ve taken a look at, it\'s the best positioned to do this. The idea remains an interesting one - bringing transparency to employment and employer information. That said, interesting ideas don\'t necessarily translate to real businesses and that is wh...
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Glassdoor\'s management bench is deep and primarily for that reason, I am giving it 4-stars. Glassdoor aspires to be the TripAdvisor or Yelp of employment, and of the three online employer sites I\'ve taken a look at, it\'s the best positioned to do this. The idea remains an interesting one - bringing transparency to employment and employer information. That said, interesting ideas don\'t necessarily translate to real businesses and that is where I do remain skeptical of Glassdoor and the other players in this space.
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<br />As mentioned, this is my third review of online employer review sites. I previously reviewed Telonu (www.telonu.com) and gave it 1-star. See my Telonu review here -- http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/telonu/reviews/amyz. I also reviewed JobVent (www.jobvent.com) and gave it 2-stars. See my JobVent review here -- http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/jobvent/reviews/amyz.
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<br />So Glassdoor is better than its competitors as obvious from the 4-star rating. It is getting this rating primarily because of its management team who are the same folks that founded Zillow and Expedia. It\'s the deep management team which I assume resulted in a couple of rounds of investment capital from the likes of A-list VC, Benchmark Capital.
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<br />Despite the great pedigree, I do not know what the business model of the site or its competitors really is. I have to assume that the team and Benchmark have some things up their sleeve and are just keeping their strategy to themselves for now.
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<br />Beyond the VC and team, Glassdoor has a few other things going for it.
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<br /><li>Since Glassdoor is reliant on user-generated content, they\'ve smartly implemented a \'give to get\' model, e.g., you have to write a review to get access to other reviews. This gets them free content and also probably helps avoid content parasites - those who just come to take content without giving any.
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<br /><li>The site\'s layout unlike Telonu makes one believe they are at a credible site for those interested in reviews of employers
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<br /><li>They\'ve structured jobs well so you can look by title and not just employer. It\'s a common sense thing but something JobVent and Telonu seem to have missed.
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<br /><li>The quality of the content is generally quite high relative to its competitors.
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<br />The downsides of Glassdoor are the largely same as the deficiencies I highlighted for Telonu and JobVent. Those sites just had other more pressing issues to deal with which Glassdoor doesn\'t seem to have and so hopefully, they\'re focused on solving these challenges.
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<br />Some perspectives on these challenges:
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<br /><b>Will the advertising model work?</b>
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<br />So Glassdoor\'s revenue model is advertising, at least to start. Tim Besse, VP of Product and Marketing, highlighted this in an interview on Cheezhead. He stated \"We don\'t intend to charge for the salary or the review content. We\'ve built a free service, and it\'s going to stay free. The model has to be a media/advertising model, and we intend on selling ads and getting into partnerships.\" The full interview is available here -- http://www.cheezhead.com/2008/07/15/ved-vp-of-marketing-dishes-the-dirt-on-glassdoor/.
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<br />Jeremiah Jamison talks about Glassdoor\'s advertising revenue conondrum on his blog and he actually highlights an interesting paradox of having great content in that engaging content makes people less likely to click on ads. It is an interesting idea and given Glassdoor\'s fairly good content, is it something that might hurt their advertising model? (see the post here -- http://jeremiahsjamison.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/glassdoors-conundrum-making-clear-the-ad-revenue-model-challenge/).
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<br /><b>How can they make money</b>
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<br />Given what Jeremiah talks about which I believe has some merit, how will Glassdoor make money? Here are some ideas - some definitely better than others:
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<br /><li>Selling packaged data & sentiment information to employers (HR groups) - As Glassdoor collects more data, they may be able to glean insights about particular companies which are doing well or not well and selling these insights to these companies and their competition. Instead of bringing in consultants, Glassdoor can offer a benchmarking and advisory platform on HR issues to companies. There may be possibilities to create offerings for the generally big companies which are reviewed on Glassdoor.
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<br /><li>Packaging reviews into primers on particular employers/industries - As the site gets thousands of reviews, it may become challenging for users to distill the key messages down about a particular employer. Perhaps primers/guides to specific employers can be created which users can buy for a few dollars to learn about a company, prepare for interviews, etc. This is not the most scalable of offerings, but there may be some value here.
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<br /><li>Starting their own job postings site - This is probably on the radar as vocal types voicing their opinion on the site are a good target market to offer employment opps to. Of course, this is a very crowded space so unsure how Glassdoor differentiates itself.
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<br />I hope there are additional ideas on the radar as I don\'t think any of these individually is a huge market opportunity idea. As mentioned in my Telonu and JobVent reviews, Glassdoor still suffers from the same limitations as its competitive brethren, namely:
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<br /><b>Model Problem #1</b>
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<br />Anonymity reduces legitimacy of reviews - When you give people an open forum to post anonymously, you tend to attract the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Making things worse is the likelihood that these services will attract many more negative reviews than positive ones. There\'s an adage that says \"Make one customer happy and they\'ll tell 1 person. Make one customer unhappy and they\'ll tell twenty people.\" The same thing applies to employees. If you\'re happy in your job, your not looking for places to write about how happy you are. Ultimately, the site will attract more negative than positive reviews, and the reality is that a site with numerous negative reviews is not very interesting to those looking for insights about an employer.
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<br /><b>Model Problem #2</b>
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<br />There is no \'stickiness\' at such sites - When you are unhappy in your job or looking for a job, you may come to the site to read or write reviews, but once you are out of that predicament, why would you come back? What kind of relationships can these sites really build with users? It seems like any relationship would be pretty thin as there is nothing that would bring the same users back.
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<br /><b>Model Problem #3</b>
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<br />Not another advertising revenue model - It\'s pretty unclear how these types of sites will make money. If the goal is lots of eyeballs clicking on ads, that is a risky way to go as many others have proven. Good luck with that. Perhaps they hope to turn into job board/job search sites but I\'m not sure what they offer is differentiated from the other players out there already in a crowded job market.
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<br /><b>Model Problem #4</b>
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<br />Right now, employers have the leverage. The market is terrible and most people are happy to keep their job. Even people looking for jobs will likely ignore negative feedback if it\'s the difference between paycheck and no paycheck. Yes, it\'s the old \"beggars can\'t be choosers\" mantra.
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<br />Ultimately, I\'m banking on the resumes and experiences of Glassdoor\'s team to reveal some interesting ideas to generate revenue. If this is another, lots of eyeballs & monetize with advertising model, it will likely fail. Let\'s see what they come up with. Perhaps some smart thinking and offerings will get me to revise my rating to 5-stars and believe that the glass if really half-full?
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