Glassdoor.com, a career website that gives job-seekers an inside look at companies—from office photos to user-generated “reviews” written by past or current employees—has just raised $12 million to expand its services.
The Series C funding round was led by a new backer, Battery Ventures, with offices in the U.S. and Israel, with participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures. The latest funding, announced Thursday, brings the company’s total capital raised to $22.2 million, and it will be used for international expansion, technology improvements, and new hiring.
The funding comes amid fresh growth for the Sausalito, California-based company, which was founded in 2007. The site boasted 3.5 million unique users in January 2011, and saw a 147-percent increase in year-over-year growth between 2009 and 2010, as the recession sent unemployment up and saw a sharp increase in the number of job seekers.
“People who are looking for a new job oftentimes see a job listing and want to research the company, and find out more about salaries, and what the company is like to work for,” says Glassdoor’s 40-year-old CEO and cofounder Robert Hohman.
His company, which lists 110,000 firms across 100 countries and provides 1.5 million pieces of content about them, spans a variety of sectors, including the usual biggies: health care, consulting, technology, finance, and business services, among others.
Someone looking into American Express, for example, would find this review from a former contract employee who gave the company a four out of five overall rating based on a 20-question survey: “Fast paced, demanding and ever-changing. Keep your head on a swivel, because there's always another project to work on!” Or this listing for Amazon.com, which received three out of five from a past employee who wrote that its Seattle headquarters was “Becoming a political, toxic environment.” Someone who wants to know about Ernst & Young CEO Jim Turley would find that he has an 88 percent approval rating among those who weighed in.
Glassdoor’s company reviews are paired with its trademarked JobScope search tool, which aggregates jobs and lets users see open positions alongside Glassdoor’s inside scoop on the companies. The site is free for job seekers, although after a certain point of research, users who want to delve deeper into the reviews will be asked to register, for free.
In addition to paid ads, one way that Glassdoor generates revenues is through Enhanced Employer Profiles. This service lets the 100 or so companies that have signed on so far provide their own descriptions of who they are and what they do in order to boost their own retention and recruitment efforts. Clients for this service include KPMG, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless.
To convince companies to add their profiles—for a price—Glassdoor gives them the lowdown on the potential employers who are using the site to eyeball the companies already, providing data on what those professionals do and where they are from. Using this data as bait, Glassdoor can bring the company in as a paid client who can get in on the recruiting action themselves.
“They can tell their story as they see it,” says Hohman, who adds that this information is displayed along with the user-generated information about the company, so that job seekers get the full picture.
Companies can also place featured job ads for hard-to-fill positions and make sure those listings are prominent among the site’s listings for particular positions. For a company like Microsoft, for instance, that would mean posting ads seeking engineers. Glassdoor charges for such services based upon click-through rates and how many applicants Microsoft ends up receiving via the site.
Hohman acknowledges that he has received calls from company executives who were not happy about how employees, past or current, were portraying them on the site.
But he says that every user-generated assessment of a company is reviewed by Glassdoor before it goes live, and that reviewers are required to be fair and consider both the pros and the cons of working for a particular company. Also, user-generated reviews cannot name names when it comes to discussing any executives under the C-level at a company.
“You have to give some pros and cons,” Hohman said. “You can’t give us a puff piece, nor can you give us a rant.”
Get more business intelligence from Portfolio.com:
Busted Budget: House Republicans unveil their proposal to slash $35 billion worth of spending on research, high-speed rail, and alternative energy—items near and dear to the Obama administration. Confections for Chicks: Seattle Chocolates CEO Jean Thompson knows women love to savor rich pieces of chocolate. Focusing on the special relationship women have with the sweet, she set out to create treats just for them.House Poor: The bad news is home values dropped like a stone in the fourth quarter. The good news is we might be close to the bottom of the housing bust. Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com
No comments:
Post a Comment