This tells me that the company does not treat people very well going out.
And that is a great indicator of how they're going to treat you when you walk in
the door... Hello, and welcome back to my channel,
where I help you slay your career and cultivate the successful life you deserve.
Today we're talking about Glassdoor reviews.
And this is something that has come up with several of my clients.
And I've had a few conversations with you guys about,
I've heard this story a few too many times.
Their Glassdoor reviews were awesome! But then I got in and they were toxic AF!
So let's talk about Glassdoor reviews,
how you should use them in your job search,
how you should actually evaluate them to see if they're valid or not,
and what resource
you should really use so that you can get an understanding of what it's really
like working at that company before you sign the dotted line.
If that sounds good to you, tap that like button and let's get into it.
First thing I need to speak to is
that not every company upholds Glassdoor's terms of service.
Now in their policies, it is very explicit.
You cannot incentivize an employee to write a review on your behalf.
And I do think that that is something that is important to glassdoor.
And similarly,
I do think that glass door does the best that it can to protect its reviewers
who are giving authentic reviews. But I have heard way too many stories,
especially about startups
that care way more about their Glassdoor reviews than the experience that they
give their teams in real life.
And these are the companies that you need to be critical up
knowing that not every single review is going to be organic and authentic.
Let's get into how you can actually evaluate if these reviews are reliable.
The first thing to look at when you're looking at Glassdoor reviews.
As you consider a potential employer is the number of reviews that they have.
Obviously big companies are going to have a lot. And because you have more data,
you are going to have a higher level of data validity.
It's not to say that everything is organic and everything is authentic,
but these companies tend to get a lot of reviews without solicitation.
And because there is just a mass number of their ratings,
actually make more sense. On the other side of the coin though,
when you have a smaller company with a low number
of reviews or a small company with a high number of reviews,
this is where I want you to start to be a little bit more critical.
Think about review behavior. Most people are
going to write a review and they have an extraordinarily exceptional experience,
or when they have an incredibly terrible experience that they don't want you to
have Glassdoor does insent you to give reviews by doing things like gating,
the amount of content that you can see without an active account, though,
there are ways around that.
I do want you to take into consideration that for small to midsize companies,
there probably.
Will not be a statistically significant amount of data. However,
when you do look at the
number of reviews in proportion to the number of employees,
this can be an indicator.
If they have been incenting their staff to give positive reviews,
the next thing that you should
look at when you're looking at Glassdoor reviews to see what comes up
consistently,
qualitatively go in and read the reviews and see what is coming up again and
again.
This is going to give you an idea of both the things that are very good at the
company, as well as the things that are very,
and don't just read the positive reviews or the negative reviews,
look through all of them and find what is consistently coming up more often than
not. When there are more than a few reviews,
you are going to see similarities that are
actually cropping up this isn't to say that they're not authentic.
I actually take this more as a positive indicator that people are having a
consistent experience.
And really it is a substance of what they're saying.
That is much more important. For example,
one of the things that is pretty much a cliche in the startup life is to say
that it's not your standard nine to five schedule,
and that you have to work really hard, but really, you know,
that's pro it's such a benefit for you to work all the time,
get me right on that lack of work life balance,
but you will see where people are framing
that in both a positive way and in a negative way on glass door.
Now, truly this could be a
good thing or a bad thing for different people at different stages in their life
and career. But it is something,
if you are paying attention to things like that, t.
hat you would want to watch for another thing that you can do when you're doing
your
qualitative review and reading through the reviews on Glassdoor is to really
start reading in between the lines, look for the things that aren't being said.
And this is true again for positive,
as well as for negative reviews drawing from my last example.
The real thing that is being said,
whether it's framed as a good thing or a bad thing, is that
there is going to be a high number of hours that is going to be demanded from
you,
whether that's something that you're looking for or not is entirely up to you,
but can you actually trust Glassdoor reviews,
especially when you're using it for something
as critical as a decision about accepting an offer at a new company?
Well,
you're going to want to watch these red flags that these aren't necessarily
authentic reviews on Glassdoor.
The first and the most obvious is that the reviews are way too good to be true.
Yes. Perhaps you have stumbled across a unicorn company that
is a Holy grail and Oh my gosh, everyone should really want to work there.
But when everyone only has positive things to say,
and no one has any criticism whatsoever.
That tells me one of two things. First,
the reviews aren't real or second freedom of thought
is a highly constricted in that company. Maybe it's a little bit of both.
If every single review is glowing about every single aspect at that company,
and no one actually has any ideas on how the company can be better.
This is actually to me, a really big red flag.
And if you came across that and you were my client, I would tell you to dig in,
in the interview and ask some questions in order to suss that out.
Another signal of the Glassdoor reviews have been either incentive or requested
by the
employer is that there is a high number of reviews in a short period of time.
For example,
what are the chances that everyone is logging on on September 15th and writing a
Glassdoor review just by chance, I can tell you,
it's probably about zero.
You can also look at who is actually leaving reviews. Generally,
you're going to be able.
To see the function.
So if you find that it's a lot of people in recruiting in HR, there's a good
chance that they are actually writing those reviews to make their jobs a little
bit easier.
Another thing that you can look at when you're reading Glassdoor reviews is if
they're actually commenting on other reviews, no,
I've actually seen this multiple times on Glassdoor
where you have a company received a negative review,
and then there is one or more reactionary, positive reviews.
And some of them will even cite the negative review. As you know,
someone who's been burned by the company.
If you think about it from an employee perspective,
how much do you really care about your employer's reputation on glass
door? Unless you're dependent on it for hiring people,
you probably don't care all that much.
I knew we're not going to be personally offended at create a gloss store account
in order.
To lash out at someone who left a negative review.
These are the ones that make me suspicious,
that they were more incentivized are written by people at the company who are
not supposed to be writing Glassdoor reviews,
such as the owners and executive leaders at the company. And on that note,
you could actually look for references to leaders, actually caring
about their Glassdoor reviews.
This is something that I've seen when I have explored
Glassdoor reviews with my clients is where you find references to the fact that
the employer really does care about their Glassdoor reviews. Now, finally,
the other red flag that you need to look at,
whether it's a positive review or negative review is read in the review.
If there is any contact such as if someone has just been terminated because the
entire team was let go, they're not going to have a very good sentiment.
And so it is going to be somewhat natural for them to log it and leave a very
bad review.
Another thing that I've seen in another big red flag for you when you are
evaluating Glassdoor reviews,
and this especially applies to negative reviews is I've even seen where
employers have responded and saying that it's a disgruntled employee.
And that's kind of crazy because even if someone was unfortunately, let go,
they should not be feeling such hatred towards their employer,
that they were going create a Glassdoor account in order to leave a bad review.
This tells me that the company does not treat people very well going out.
And that is a great indicator of how they're going to treat you when you walk in
the door, not to say that it's not a disgruntled employee,
but if you do see a pattern in the reviews, this is a strong indicator for you.
That this is something that you need to be critical of.
When you do see any of these red flags.
And especially if you're reading the Glassdoor reviews
in preparation for an interview, bring those questions in and ask them,
especially if you're meeting with team members, however,
this isn't always going to be your most
reliable resource to either refute or uphold positive or negative
Glassdoor reviews. And that's why I recommend you take this next step.
When you have spotted red flags,
or you're suspicious about the Glassdoor reviews on the company site.
And that is to reach out to a former employee. Ideally, it's going to be someone
within your direct network. However, if you know someone that is a second degree
connection on LinkedIn, connect with them,
and you can actually open up the conversation,
let them know that you're considering working with that employer and ask if they
have any insights or advice that they would give you pretty much,
no job seeker actually does this, but in fairness,
employers are doing reference checks on you.
You shouldn't be doing reference checks on them as well,
because the next step in.
Your career is going to be an important one and making the wrong step is going
to get you back onto the job market far, faster than what you actually do,
the intended, and especially in competitive job market.
Sometimes the time to get hired isn't as fast as necessarily want it to be.
So we're not eager to go back there taking this step to
make sure that you land in the right spot is going to help you avoid potential
disaster.
I did just mention that you should be formulating questions from the Glassdoor
reviews in order to bring into the interview.
And I highly recommend that you walk into every
interview that you have with a list of questions.
If you're struggling with this, I want you
to go and check out this video right now so that you can make sure you're asking
the right questions. If this video was helpful or informative,
give it a thumbs up.
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week doses of the best career success, it's advice online.
And I will see you in the next video bye for now.