Hello everyone! I received an overwhelming response to the last bonus episode. Thank you for listening!
Given this, I’ve decided to release another bonus episode. In today’s episode, I share data from Glassdoor and LinkedIn. I cover employee reactions to their company’s handling of COVID — as well as data on how the job market is today. In addition, I share tips with you on job searching during the Coronavirus pandemic.
I hope today’s episode is helpful. If you have additional questions I can answer on a future episode, please send me a message.
Today is truly a historic day in the world of job seeking! Job search giant Glassdoor.com has just announced that they have been sold to Recruit Holdings for $1.2 B.
Glassdoor CEO Robert Hohman announced the deal in a tweet, stating, “Excited to announce Glassdoor is joining together with Recruit Holdings.”
Recruit Holdings is a large company based in Japan that primarily focuses on HR-related businesses. For example, they own a number of global staffing firms. But, the one company that’s already in their portfolio that you have definitely heard of is Indeed.com. Glassdoor is the world’s fastest growing job website, while Indeed is ranked as the largest.
Glassdoor and Recruit Holdings cite the following benefits that will come from the acquisition:
Enhance the ability to deliver better solutions to job seekers and employers over the long term
Expand further into the growing HR technology industry
Strengthen capabilities of their HR technology platform with one of the strongest brands in the industry
Brings an experienced and talented Glassdoor management team into Recruit
If you are like most job seekers, you probably don’t remember a time when Glassdoor wasn’t a household name. But, this iconic job website just got its start ten years ago – in June of 2008 – in Mill Valley, California. In this relatively short time, Glassdoor has helped to push the needle of transparency in the workplace – in terms of both pay and company ratings and reviews. They have also provided job seekers another resource for both applying online, and for researching the interview processes within companies.
The transparency created by sites like Glassdoor opens the doors for professionals on both sides of the hiring desk to have more frank and honest conversations about issues, such as equal pay.
Over the last ten years, Glassdoor has grown to now include visitors from more than 190 countries and 770,000 companies. They have participation from more than 160,000 companies — and have received more than 40 million company reviews from employees. This all adds up to 59 million unique visitors per month.
As you can imagine, this is some pretty big news for those job seekers looking for a new career. Glassdoor and Indeed are both incredible sites with unique strengths. It will be exciting to see what the two can create for the future, together.
For the full press release about the Glassdoor acquisition by Recruit Holdings, visit Glassdoor.com: https://www.glassdoor.com/press/new-chapter/
I hope you’re having a great week! I’m writing with an update. My recent tutorial about how to use LinkedIn’s new referral feature was well received. If you missed the LinkedIn referral tutorial, you can find it on YouTube here.
Because it went over so well, I wanted to share another tutorial for you. In this tutorial, I’m going to share with you — how to use the Glassdoor “Know Your Worth Tool.”
The Glassdoor.com Know Your Worth Tool helps you to estimate your current market value — where you live, for your job, and for the amount of experience you have. It helps you to know if you’re being paid fairly, and if not, what alternatives might exist for you in your area.
I hope you enjoy this how to use the Glassdoor “Know Your Worth Tool” tutorial!
You know that negotiation is one of my favorite things – especially when you’re switching companies! A job transition is the perfect time to negotiate your salary up. When it comes to a successful salary negotiation, one of the most important things you can do is salary research. Take the time to find out what a competitive salary is for your new role, and for particular companies.
Especially in the corporate world, different companies pay very differently for the same position. Even within a company, pay can vary significantly. Companies use pay bands to determine how much employees may make. It may not sound like a big deal, but some positions have pay bands that span a range of $50K or more. In theory, you will be paid more for more experience and more education. In reality, these things do matter – but, so does your ability to negotiate.
You may wonder where to begin your salary research. There are many different sources online where you can do salary research – too many to cover here. I will touch on just a few that will be the best sources of information for beginning your salary research – including a new way to research salary that rolls out later this week!
Glassdoor.com
Glassdoor has two options for salary research. The first is researching what a particular company pays for a certain role. In other words, search for a company that you like – by name. Then, enter a location (or you can leave location blank) and select the dropdown for “Salary.”
This simple search will give you a list of different roles at the company, and the pay range for each. You should search through the list to find jobs that are the most similar to the one you hope to interview for. Notice that each job will have both a pay range (shown as min and max), and the number of people who have reported their salary. Glassdoor provides self-reported data, so the data coming out is only as good as the data going in. Honestly though, the data going in appears to be pretty solid.
Their second option for salary research is a tool called the Know Your Worth Tool. It allows you to track your value over time, compared to the others in your area.
Salary.com
Salary.com has been around for years, but still provides basic salary information that can be helpful to your search. The site allows you to search by job title and city or zip code.
It provides a bell curve that will share with you what people with your title are making on average – and at the top and bottom ends of the curve. You can also compare base salary to base and bonus.
Because Salary.com isn’t industry or company specific, the data provided can be a bit vague, but I would argue that it’s still a decent data point to collect during your salary research.
Indeed.com
You may never have thought much about it before, but Indeed also offers salary data. When you visit their site, click the “Find Salaries” tab. You will be taken to a screen where you can search by job title or company. If you search by job title, you’re taken to a second screen where you can narrow down your results by city and company. If you search by company, you will be taken to a screen where you can narrow it down based on job title within that company. Indeed provides a range, similar to both Glassdoor.com and Salary.com.
LinkedIn.com
Today, you can find estimated salaries on LinkedIn by clicking on the “Jobs” tab and then clicking the link for “LinkedIn Salary.” You can search both by job title and by city. LinkedIn provides a range for both median base salary and median total compensation. And, you can narrow the results down by industry and years of experience.
But, even better than this — LinkedIn is adding a new feature to their site this week that will allow you to access the salary for a specific job posting you’re interested in. They want to help bring more transparency to conversations about salary. You know that I love this.
Here’s how the new “Salary Insights” will work. For many (but not all) jobs, you will begin to see a salary for each job posting. It will be listed as either “Expected” salary or “Estimated” salary. Expected is the salary that is provided by the company. Expected salary is LinkedIn’s estimate based on other data they have that matches the title, company, and location.
This new feature goes live later this week. Try it, and let me know what you think! I’m so excited to see increased pay transparency as part of the application process.
Salary Research Summary
Your ability to negotiate for the best salary will be determined by the hard work you put in to research what you’re worth. But, lucky for all of us, this process is getting easier and easier! The more salary research you do, the more likely you are to be able to ask for what’s fair. And, that’s all we really need, right? To be paid fairly, and to be treated with respect – those two things are key!
Good luck with your salary research! Let me know what you think about these methods.
I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.
Also, be sure to subscribe to my Copeland Coaching Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher where I discuss career advice every Tuesday! If you’ve already heard the podcast and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review in iTunes or Stitcher.
Being happy at work is an essential part of career fulfillment. Sometimes, it seems we spend more time researching where to eat the best hamburger than where to work. Much like skipping restaurant reviews, failing to research a company can come back to burn you later. The good news is that you no longer have to know someone personally to get the scoop on a company.
There are many employment related websites, including Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com, where current and former employees can leave anonymous reviews about their experiences. If you read the reviews, you’ll often notice patterns. Much like hotel reviews, those who leave reviews are either very happy or very unhappy. Have you ever noticed that many hotel reviews are left by customers who had some kind of awful experience, like bed bugs or dirty sheets? Typically, to be motivated to take the time to leave a review, an employee (much like a hotel guest) must have extreme emotions about the place where they work.
Glassdoor recently released a study on this very topic. They wanted to take a look into how balanced online employer reviews really are. Glassdoor’s study wanted to find out whether their site provides more or less balanced reviews than other review sites. In other words, are all of the company reviews very negative or very positive, like the hotel reviews.
If you’ve used Glassdoor before, you already know this. The site is free. But, in order to use it, Glassdoor requires you to leave some type of feedback on a company where you have worked (past or present). Glassdoor uses what they call a “give to get” policy. In other words, it encourages everyone to leave a review – not just those who are unhappy. As you may have guessed, this policy encourages people to leave reviews that are more neutral in nature.
“This study gives strong evidence that company reviews on Glassdoor are more balanced because of the way they are collected. The policy creates incentive for people to contribute to the site, who may otherwise opt out. It should help quell misconceptions that employees only provide really positive or really negative opinions about companies on Glassdoor. The data show that’s not the case — Glassdoor’s give to get policy creates a more balanced picture of companies,” said Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor chief economist.
Another great feature on both Glassdoor and Indeed is this. Although the websites have a financial relationship with hiring companies (companies pay them to advertise their jobs), the sites don’t allow employers to edit employee reviews. In other words, just because an employer doesn’t care for a particular negative review, Glassdoor and Indeed won’t delete it. The company must face the review and correct the problem directly with the employee.
In order to increase the odds that your next workplace will be a positive one, don’t skip the company reviews. They’re there to help give you a little insight into what it’s really like to work at a particular company.
Angela Copeland is a Career Coach and Founder of Copeland Coaching and can be reached at CopelandCoaching.com or on Twitter at @CopelandCoach.
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