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Glassdoor, the Iconic Job-Hunting and Reviews Website, Has Been Bought For $1.2 billion (recode.net)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the done-deal dept.

Glassdoor, the popular job-hunting platform that gives people a window into conditions at hundreds of thousands of companies, has agreed to be acquired by Japan's Recruit Holdings for $1.2 billion cash. From a report: Recruit Holdings, a large Japanese human resources company that owns other job sites like Indeed, spent eight figures in cash to acquire the decade-old company. Glassdoor hadn't raised new money in about two years, when it was valued by investors at around $860 million, so it likely needed to decide whether to raise more money, sell or try to go public. The company reportedly was at least considering an IPO in the second half of 2018 and was interviewing banks that could take them there.

48 comments

  1. Glassdoor accuracy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How accurate have others found salary info on GD? I particularly use it for salary research but I find I can get more money than the numbers on GD. Iâ(TM)m just never sure how much more I could get if I asked.

    1. Re:Glassdoor accuracy? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Well, apparently the new owners spent eight figures in cash to acquire Glassdoor for $1.2B, so if typical Glassdoor salary figures are off by only one order of magnitude, they're still an improvement...

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    2. Re: Glassdoor accuracy? by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 1

      Very few companies provide their salary ranges even if you ask.

      But, the site has other benefits such as reviews and info on the company. While some of this info is on the various websites, itâ(TM)s nice having it in one place.

      Unlike Indeed.com, glassdoor is not a job posting aggregator.

    3. Re: Glassdoor accuracy? by rnturn · · Score: 1

      ``Unlike Indeed.com, glassdoor is not a job posting aggregator.''

      Really? I still get job postings from them. And not very accurate ones, i.e., listings for jobs that are no longer active, are already filled, whatever. It was common for a while to hear from recruiters that jobs were no longer available and then, a week later, see them show up in Glassdoor's emails.

      But that's not my biggest beef with them. I traded emails for a week or so asking them why they were grabbing your Facebook profile photo to use as the commenter's picture when you commented on one of Glassdoor's articles. They never once adequately explained why they were doing this only to say that it happens when you link your Glassdoor account to Facebook. Since they went out of their way to explain to me that I didn't have a Glassdoor account (which I already knew) they never once put two and two together and figured out that, if I didn't have a Glassdoor account, I couldn't possibly have linked it to Facebook (which I would have never done under any circumstances, well... I supposed a gun to the head would convince me). I had to drop the email conversation as it was hazardous to my blood pressure. I'm hoping the new owner eventually realizes what a CF they spent their money on. I predict that it'll turn into something like Facebook like LinkedIn did after Microsoft got their hands on that site.

      --
      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  2. Slightly better than a screen-scrape by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I found before that glassdoor was occasionally a good source for jobs that were open, and often a good source for jobs that were no longer open. The problem that it won't solve - that no other website I'm aware of is doing anything to solve - is that of getting applications read by actual human beings. Employers more often than not have a blind loyalty to using algorithms (that more often than not are employed by HR people who don't understand them) to quickly filter out applications. The result of this is that many qualified job seekers never get a chance to talk to anyone.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      Are there any well-known ways to bypass this system? That will actually get your resume onto someone's desk and not get it tossed because "they didn't follow protocol" or what-not?

    2. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      A person's time is more valuable than a computer algorithm's and if you have hundreds of applications, there's no way any one person could hope to evaluate them all. There's also no guarantee that the HR person is any better than an algorithm either, or at least not so much so to be worth the extra cost. It's even more expensive if you want applicants to talk to your developers, engineers, etc. that are actually capable of assessing an applicant so you need some way of getting a shortlist of candidates.

      I've heard one manager jocularly state that he just takes half of the applications and throws them away without even reading them because he didn't want anyone who was unlucky working at the company. He may have been joking, but he probably wasn't lying. Sometimes there's just too many applications to reasonably go through and be able to talk to everyone.

    3. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Networking, duh. If you're good enough, people will come to you.

    4. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      None left. Even when I get job opportunities through people I've known for 15 years, the line is always the same: go online and fill out the full application, then I can help move it along. But, at most companies that have a process, there is no way around it usually. Small companies don't have formal processes anyway, and bigger ones are doing it to avoid any accusations of discrimination.

    5. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's like high school all over.
      The popular kids get the breaks whilst those with the brains get left behind.

      And they siad things would get better after high school.
      Seems that is not true any more.

    6. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not like humans are social creatures or anything

    7. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      In this context, "popularity" is often won by doing useful things that make people remember you later, so is that a problem?

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    8. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      A person's time is more valuable than a computer algorithm's

      But that comparison only matters if they both get useful results. If your computer algorithm is generating lots of false positives and a few bad false negatives, you might have been better off getting a properly qualified human to do it anyway.

      I've worked for smaller businesses where senior technical people personally examined the CVs for anyone who wasn't clearly ruled out. The admin staff in front were mostly there to avoid legal issues, clerical errors and time-wasting by CV-spamming agencies with their own keyword-driven junk process. Someone who knows what they're doing can probably average 2 candidates checked per minute for typical technical positions, so even if you have 100 applicants, one person who knows what they're doing can cut that down to a shortlist in an hour.

      The key thing is that for the candidates who can't be put in or out almost instantly, you'll probably get much better results this way. If the alternative is to put the wrong people through, and then waste multiple senior technical people's time in chunks of several hours doing phone screens or on-site interviews, better accuracy early on is a big time-saver.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    9. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      In this context, "popularity" is often won by doing useful things that make people remember you later, so is that a problem?

      Now you're just being reasonable. Cut that out.

      The social media lynch mob will be along for you shortly ...

    10. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not being a troll here. But my advice is to improve your resume and cover letter-writing abilities. My recent experience has been that every time I send my resume to a company in response to a job ad, I hear back wanting -- at the very least -- a follow-up phone call. In my current position I review plenty of resumes. So some general tips I'd give might look something like this:

      • Resume should be clean and concise.
        • 2 pages maximum. 3 if you absolutely must. I see plenty of 10+ page resumes and I don't have time to venture far past the second page.
        • Don't cram all your information in to fit it on the page requirements above. Don't waste time of the person reviewing it, just get to the point and give them only the information you think they'll be interested in.
      • Tailor your resume to include details relating to the job posting, and omit details that are not important to the role. (Someone wanting a graphics engineer, for example, doesn't care about the nitty gritty details of the backend work you're doing. So yes mention it, but go light on the details.)
      • Write a cover letter explicitly addressing skills/duties referenced in the job posting and how you meet those requirements.
      • I'm not kidding, don't skip the cover letter. It makes you a human rather than a resume. It provides clarity on what you're doing, what you can do, and what you want to do.
      • In the cover letter, also note the skills you don't have. It shows you're honest. And -- assuming this is true -- mention that you expect you could get up-to-speed in no time. (But if you're doing backend work and want to be a graphics engineer, you'll want to have some side-project experience to show you know the field, otherwise you're not going to hear back.)
    11. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Networking, duh. If you're good enough, people will come to you.

      Except that even then you still need to apply through "official channels" if the company is bigger than a mom & pop shop, even if you already personally know the manager that you'd be working for.

    12. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      Sorry. I'll try not to let it happen again.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    13. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

      One thing I encountered when I was on the job market in recent years was that the same job opening would be re-posted a few months later from the same company, and for a job that almost certainly would have only hired one person. This tells me that most likely they either didn't find someone who fit the job, or they offered the position to someone and were turned down. Yet over the course of that happening no human made any attempt to contact me or gave any indication that they had seen my application. I really doubt that my application was so unusual that I was the only one who met the requirements and was auto-trashed by the algorithm.

      In other words, their algorithm is wasting their time as much as it may be saving it.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    14. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. I personally have 3 examples of highly-qualified applicants at my current employer that disappeared into the HR black hole, not getting so much as an email in reply.

    15. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "[D]oing useful things that make people remember you later" makes you popular with the people the job seeker used to work with, while the job seeker needs to be popular with people they have not yet worked with.

    16. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Cover letters are the dumbest fucking thing ever. How about you read the resume or the duplicated information from it that's on the application form? Why do you want some useless narrative attached?

    17. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are two possible reasons for this. First, companies are reluctant to provide any training, so they typically want someone who has already done the specific thing the position is for. So if they need someone to design optical interconnects for satellites, anyone who hasn't done exactly that is immediately eliminated. Chances are, they'll eventually be filled internally (by people already doing the job under a different title) and are only advertised externally as part of some fair hiring practice.

      Second, many of the job openings listed on the various job sites are only hypothetical job openings, not actual vacant positions (and not "contingent on contract award" positions, most of which will vanish without being filled). They may have all of the talent they need for the current and anticipated work program, but it never hurts to add expertise in potential growth areas. Especially if it means hiring people away from a competitor. Those positions target people who are already employed and are considering changing companies or locations, or possibly reverting to a previous career path. Unemployed people need not apply.

    18. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've gotten two of my last three jobs because of 'people I used to work with.' In one instance, a person who knew my skillset recommended me to a department had who was looking for someone with my experience. In the other, a guy I used to work with took a job at a new company as CIO and looked me up. People tend to move to different companies.

    19. Re: Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 1

      You should be networking versus using online job sites. Knowing somebody will get you in the door or, at least your resume seen. Many hiring managers cut off reviewing resumes after they get so many. So, if you are determined to use online sites, get your resume/application in very early.

      Leverage LinkedIn and keep it up to date. But, donâ(TM)t ask people you donâ(TM)t know for referrals. You can, however, contact people of interest and ask about their job and company culture. Ask them for an information interview and buy them coffee or a meal!

      Keep in mind that only about 6% of jobs are filled using online search sites.

      Good luck!

    20. Re: Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 1

      Itâ(TM)s a marketing document. It shows you give a crap about the position and that you possess some semblance of writing skills.

      Whether online sites actually forward them is debatable. But, when working with a recruiter who asks for it, it can make the difference.

    21. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It depends on those people also being reasonable, having a position to offer you, or, as has happened to me, being alive.

    22. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Putting a section in your resume with Keyword experience is really that hard huh?

    23. Re:Slightly better than a screen-scrape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a third. The job is terrible and they're burning through people. I once took a contract-to-hire job with the PA Attorney General's office. They spent the first two weeks telling me how hard it was to find people and then the following five months showing me why. Absolutely awful place and, incidentally, you can read about it on GlassDoor.

      I worked at a couple of other places like that during a rough patch in my career. Those positions still hit my mailbox every few months through a job site or a recruiter too. It's a huge red flag for me when an interviewer or, if I've already been tricked, a supervisor goes into that "oh me oh my nobody we hire ever works out." More people need to put up warnings on sites like this.

  3. Isn't Recruit the 80s/90s corruption company? by mccalli · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looked it up - yes, it is.. I don't know the state of things now - is anyone in Japan able to comment on Recruit's current reputation?

    1. Re:Isn't Recruit the 80s/90s corruption company? by BlackSupra · · Score: 1

      Isn't Recruit the same company that bought Indeed for $UNDISCLOSED$, yes, it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    2. Re:Isn't Recruit the 80s/90s corruption company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is this the same group company?

      https://www.buzzfeed.com/jp/keigoisashi/gathery?utm_term=.jibEKrLyp#.ybVNeG8X2

  4. "Indeed!" by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    >> a large Japanese human resources company that owns other job sites like Indeed

    It would be politically incorrect to say why, as a huge fan of "Big Trouble in Little China", that I found this phrase very, very funny.

    1. Re:"Indeed!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and it made me think of Stargate SG-1

  5. The Japanese... by The+Fat+Bastard · · Score: 1

    Years ago I used to work at Japanese companies like Fujitsu and Sony. Ever since then I still get contacted for jobs that require being fluent in Japanese. I even got a international call from a hiring manager in Tokyo who tried to interview me in Japanese. That was weird.

  6. Re:The Turning Japanese... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah, I really think so.

  7. Re:The Turning Japanese... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Weird is Kristen Dunst singing Turning Japanese.

  8. Corporate Shills for their Golfing Buddies by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 2

    The minimize negative feedback and give all the corporate sponsors a chance to maximize their positive image. The point was supposed to be finding out that your new potential employer is actually a hellhole with a crazy boss, insane hours, and populated by your wonderful new no-deodorant H1B co-workers. The only reason that's helpful to Glassdoor is that they can then blackmail the company in to paying to improve their image on Glassdoor.

    1. Re:Corporate Shills for their Golfing Buddies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, bro, I've got it...Yelp for Employers!! :-)

    2. Re:Corporate Shills for their Golfing Buddies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what glassdoor was supposed to be. Unfortunately, just like yelp, jerks tend to warp most reviews into "They didn't pander to my every whim", so the site becomes useless.

  9. No doubt fueled by the AI bubble? by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

    I wonder what they want with this company. I've looked at it from time to time, and it's mostly people complaining about their bad experiences or fresh grads comparing offers and perks from Accenture vs. KPMG vs. IBM for entry-level management consulting positions.

    Maybe someone convinced them that they can mine the data with AI the way Microsoft is trying to do with LinkedIn?

    Honestly, if someone can solve the transparency problem that happens when finding a new job, I'd pay a billion dollars for the company. It's infuriating applying for positions and hearing nothing positive or negative back, applying for fake positions, not getting your profile past the Taleo/HR filters and into the pile that the person with an actual clue reviews, etc. etc. etc. Companies must miss so many good potential hires just because of all the stupid filtering, and with all the BS artists in IT these days I can see why they do it, but it's frustrating that it's still so hard to find a job when you actually need one.

  10. some of the algorithms discrimination by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    some of the algorithms discrimination

  11. job application at comcast is really bad by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    job applications at comcast are really bad very long it's your full application + personality test + Big skills matrix to fill out.

  12. also why do they need MY SSN right away? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    also why do they need MY SSN right away?

    With identity theft why do they need that Ask for that later on!

    1. Re:also why do they need MY SSN right away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mass duplicate account problems. We've got somebody repeatedly posting bad reviews.

  13. Taleo software is just very poor by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    http://taleosucks.blogspot.com...

  14. Federal jobs want an long Resume by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Federal jobs want an long Resume

  15. Fake data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most of the review posts about a few prior places where I've worked were wildly fabricated. They had job titles like "Engineer" but had nothing but HR buzz speak in them (and weren't accurate at all).

    I doubt the value of GlassDoor since it's easy for HR drones to hire people to infiltrate it and post fake salaries, etc. Then again, HR as an industry is always considered a bit of a joke, and for good reason.

  16. Are these sites even useful? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This one, LinkedIn, etc. I've found them pretty useless. Not one single job has come my way vÃa them.