The Ultimate Guide to Analyzing a Company’s Glassdoor Page

If you’ve heard of Glassdoor, odds are that you know you can find company ratings on our site. But while this is an important part of your job hunt research, the truth is that Glassdoor offers so much more than that (including job listings — more on that later!). So if you’re only looking at a company’s rating in order to assess what it’s like to work there, you’re missing out. But with so much information available, what exactly should you focus on?

I chatted with Jamie Hichens, Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition at Glassdoor (and resident job search guru) to get the low-down on what job seekers should keep in mind when viewing a company’s Glassdoor page — here were a few of her top recommendations.

1 Company Reviews

Let’s start with Glassdoor’s bread and butter: company reviews. Using Glassdoor’s 33 million reviews and insights for approximately 700,000 companies, “you can see what current and former employees have to say about working there, including what’s working well, what needs improvement and advice to senior management. Depending on what you want in a company, reading reviews is a great way to better understand what goes on inside a company and the type of culture that is best for you,” Hichens says.

One important thing to keep in mind: “Most people on Glassdoor read 6-7 reviews before forming an opinion about a company, so we recommend reading several reviews as you conduct your research. There is no perfect place to work, so don’t focus on just the glowing reviews, or those that are overly negative — you want to see what a variety of people have to say, look for constant themes within reviews, and determine if the company is right for you or not. Interestingly, on Glassdoor, 7 in 10 people report that they are OK or satisfied in their jobs,” Hichens shares.

That’s right — don’t get thrown off if you see a negative review here and there. “Even the Best Places to Work have some negative reviews,” Hichens points out. “The important part when researching a company is to take into account themes you uncover from a variety of employees, and looking for reviews and details related to what’s important to you and your life in and out of work. What’s a bad review to one person may not be a bad review to someone else, so it depends on what’s most important to you.”

When looking at a company’s reviews, you might be wondering how they stack up against the average employer. “Of the 700,000 employers reviewed on Glassdoor, the average company rating is a 3.3, so employers with a higher rating are an above-average employer, while those with a lower rating are below-average employers,” Hichens says. But like I mentioned before: it’s important to keep in mind that this is just a part of the whole picture. “This is a useful data point to take into account, but it’s not everything. Make sure to still read as many reviews and insights as possible to really understand where the company is today, what it’s like in the department you might be working in and to fully understand where the company has been and where it’s going,” Hichens advises.

2 Salaries

For a long time, you had to wait until the very end stages of the interview process before you found out how much you’d get paid — a process that often ended in frustration or even feeling like you wasted your time pursuing a job that was way below your expectations. With Glassdoor, though, that pain point has become a thing of the past.

“On Glassdoor, you can see salary reports for specific jobs in specific cities at specific companies,” Hichens says, which “[helps] you get a better sense of what fair pay for a particular role should be.”

Not sure how to gauge whether or not those salaries are good deals? “You should also use our tool called Know Your Worth™ to get your current market value where you can ensure you are being paid fairly,” Hichens suggests. Just enter your company name, location, job title, years of experience, and a few other data points to get a free, personalized estimate of what you should be making — it’s incredibly useful not only for assessing salary offers, but also as a data point to bring up in salary negotiations.

Some job listings on Glassdoor will even say right within the description what the estimated pay is — Glassdoor’s recently launched salary estimates can help you instantly know what you could be paid before you even apply, so you know what to expect right from the get-go.

3 Interviews

In my opinion, Glassdoor’s interview reviews are one of the most underrated features on the site. They tell you not only whether or not previous candidates have generally had a positive, neutral, or negative interview experience, but also how long it takes, how difficult it is, whether or not the reviewer received an offer, and, most critically, which questions the company asked.

Think about it: when you know which questions a company’s recruiters and hiring managers have asked, you can prepare for and rehearse those exact questions, making it that much more likely that you’ll ace the interview (and ultimately land a job offer). If you really want to go above and beyond, check out our list of the 50 Most Common Interview Questions that employers ask.

4 Benefits

Benefits aren’t always the first thing you think of when you’re assessing a company, but for many people, perks like 401(k) plans, health insurance, and child care programs are make-or-break factors in deciding whether or not they take a job. So whether you care most about free lunches, the ability to work from home, or something else entirely, be sure to check out the “insights shared by employees on more than 50 benefits a company may offer to see how your potential total compensation package might compare from one employer to another,” Hichens suggests.

5 Ratings and Trends

Beyond the three major metrics you see at the top of a company’s “reviews” section — company rating, recommend to a friend score, and CEO approval rating — you can click “Ratings & Trends” to reveal a handful of other ratings as well, for factors like Culture & Values, Work/Life Balance, Senior Management, Comp & Benefits, and Career Opportunities. Clicking on this button will also reveal trends over time and the distribution of ratings.

“We know that the majority of people value company culture, career opportunities and trust in senior leadership when it comes to long-term employee satisfaction, so if this applies to you too, look for reviews where these themes are strongest. They might help point you to a company that values you more than others and can help foster your professional development in the near term and long-term,” Hichens says.

6 Jobs

If, after reviewing all of the items above, you decide that the company you’re reviewing is a good fit for you, it’s time to apply to one of their open positions!

“Glassdoor is now the second-largest job site and fastest growing in the U.S., so if you see a company you might want to work for, you can also see all of their open jobs on Glassdoor,” Hichens says. “If you like a company, apply to one of their jobs directly on Glassdoor while doing your research all in one stop.”

Now that you’re a bonafide Glassdoor expert, it’s time to put that knowledge to work — so go forth, research, and find the job that fits your life!

The 5 Best Ways to Stay Motivated During a Job Search

Are you disappointed with the progress of your job search? Unemployment can make your spirits plummet. You’ve heard the comparisons: Resumes are a way to market yourself. Successful resumes reveal why you are the ideal candidate. Andrew Reiffenberger, a recruiting director, stated, “Your resume is you. It’s you on a page.” No wonder you feel down when you don’t get responses to your inquiries. It’s hard not to feel personally rejected.

How can you maintain high spirits? Here are the five best ways to keep your motivation during a job search.

1Control Your Goals

Writing your goals improves your chances of accomplishing them, according to research conducted at Dominican University. Getting a job offer this week sounds great; however, it is not a motivating goal. Why doesn’t it qualify? You have no control over whether a company will offer you a position. Even if you perform well on an interview during the week, you can’t control whether the hiring manager decides to hire you or not.

Motivating goals are measurable goals that depend on you—and no one but you. For example, here are three goals that you can control: Attend one networking event per month. Create a list of ten target companies by the end of the day. Identify and contact at least one reference from each previous job listed on your resume. Setting goals like these, and achieving them, will give you the sense of forward movement that is essential to stay motivated during a job hunt.

2Maintain a Reasonable Schedule

Lazing about the house all day in your pajamas probably won’t help you land a new job, and neither will scouring job postings for hours on end. In fact, both radical courses of action will do more harm than good. In other words, you’ll be in no state to shine when you do get a promising interview if you fall to either extreme. Balance is needed. Set your alarm so you don’t snooze away the day. (However, it’s okay to enjoy an extra hour or two of sleep during your first week off work. Your body may be catching up on some lost shut-eye.) Schedule a couple of days, or an hour each day, to concentrate on your search. Give thought to how you will structure your activities. For instance, you might update your CV and contact your references before you spend time searching for jobs online. That way, when you find an intriguing prospect, you’ll be ready to apply right away.

3Take Care of the Product

If a resume is to sell you, you have to make sure that you keep the product (i.e., you) in prime condition. Isn’t it true that you avoid wilted greens and dented containers when you go grocery shopping? In the same way, you need to make sure that you remain marketable to potential employers. Renew certifications and licenses as necessary. Stay on top of industry news and innovations. Remember to care for your physical health too. Get some sun every day. Eat a healthy diet. Follow an exercise regimen and get sufficient rest. If you do, you can be confident that you’re presenting your best self to the world.

4Explore Your Options

Do you have more free time now that you are not working? Is there something that you’ve always dreamed of doing? Gloria Steinem once said, ” Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” Once you have an idea of what you want to do, pursue it! Explore different career paths by reading about them and talking to people who work in the field. Leisure activities and interests also qualify as worthy pursuits. Why not find a club that centers on your hobby? Consider taking a class. With a little investigation, you might find plenty of options to study for little or no cost.

5Surround Yourself with Positivity

Negativity is contagious. If you associate with negative people, their bad vibes will rub off on your attitude. Think about the people who surround you. Who is the most encouraging? Maximize your time with the ones who make you feel the best. And don’t forget, your friends don’t all have to be the flesh-and-blood variety. By joining an online forum like Unemploymentville, you can network, get advice, or simply find a listening ear among people who are sharing the same experience. You might also find encouragement, along with helpful hints, in motivational blogs and podcasts.

Don’t let the progress of your job search run you into the ground. Your ideal job could be just around the corner. While you continue to look for a suitable job opening, maintain high spirits by implementing these five tips. If you do, you’ll remember your period of unemployment with more fondness than you thought possible.

Watch Your Words in the Job Search!

The Grammarly team collected 500 active job postings, including marketing and engineering jobs, from the top 100 most profitable companies in the United States. We then assessed how each company used language in these listings to express hiring priorities.

• Hiring companies do not want someone who views a “job” as “work”
• “Experience” is more highly valued by hiring companies than “skills”
• Job seekers should use their cover letter and resume to talk about instances of teamwork vs. individual contributions
• Hiring companies still prefer candidates with a degree versus relevant experience

 

We’ve summarized our findings using this handy infographic:

Watch Your Words in the Job Search

To embed our infographic into a blog post, paste the following HTML snippet into your web editor:

When applying for a new job, choose your words wisely. Your cover letter and resume are excellent places to show off your understanding of the job requirements.

Whose vs. Who’s

Who’s is a contraction linking the words who is or who has, and whose is the possessive form of who. They may sound the same, but spelling them correctly can be tricky. To get into the difference between who’s and whose, read on.

Who’s vs. Whose

• Both who’s and whose come from the pronoun who (shocking, right?).
• Who’s is a contraction, meaning it’s two words stuck together. The formula: who + is, or who + has.
• For example: who’s hungry?
• Whose is a possessive pronoun. Use it when you’re asking (or telling) whom something belongs to.
• For example: whose sandwich is this?

But, when you need “whom” to explain what “whose” means, more information is needed. Plus, even though who’s is a contraction and whose is possessive, put them together and you sound like an owl starting to fall asleep. That’s because these two words are homophones, meaning they sound the same, but mean different things. Keep your apostrophes where they belong by continuing through this explanation of who’s vs. whose.

What Is Who?

First up, let’s introduce this exceptionally tricky pronoun. It has many forms, and many a brave soul has cowered in the attempt to use it correctly.

Who

Who is a subject pronoun, like he, she, I, or they, but it’s the interrogative used for animate subjects. In other words, use it to ask a question about which person did something or is someone.

“Who is in charge here?” “Who asked you to go to the dance?” “Who is that?”

Whom

This is the bane of many an English-speaker’s existence. But it’s not as hard as you think: whom is an object pronoun, meaning if you could replace it with “him,” “her,” “me,” or “them,” you’re good to go.

“Whom are you referencing?” “Whom did you ask to go to the dance?” “To whom are you speaking?”

Yeah, we know—it sounds stuffy. But if you want to be correct correct, that’s how it works.

And now, on to the spelling culprits.

Who’s or Whose

They sound the same: hoos. It rhymes with shoes.

So: is it who’s shoes? Or whose shoes?

Who’s

To recap, “who” is the pronoun used to mean “what or which person or people.” Add the apostrophe and the s for these reasons:

Who’s = who + is or

Who’s = who + has

Really. It’s that simple.

Who’s is a contraction. That means the apostrophe stands in for a letter that goes missing to make pronunciation easier and quicker. Imagine saying “I do not know who is going to go.” Out loud, it’ll probably sound more like “I don’t know who’s gonna go.” The jury’s still out on gonna, but we’d guess you’ve already heard of using an apostrophe to mark an omitted word or sound. Wouldn’t y’all agree?

Whose

Whose shoes? Translation: whom do the shoes belong to?

Whose is a pronoun used in questions to ask who owns something or has something. In other words, whose is about possession.

Don’t be tricked: on the one hand, because grammazons mark possessive nouns with apostrophe + s, it’s tempting to think that who’s (not whose) is the possessive form of who. But apostrophes are also used in contractions. That’s what the apostrophe indicates in who’s, and that’s why whose is the possessive form of the pronoun .

Think of it this way:

Its = belonging to it It’s = contraction of it is or it has Whose = belonging to whom Who’s = contraction of who is or who has

Incidentally, Who’s shoes? would mean “Who is Shoes?” Some folks have strange nicknames. Like Blue. Whose clues? Blue’s clues.

Weirdly, the above sentence wouldn’t mean “Who has shoes?”—you’d probably say “Who’s got shoes?” if that’s the meaning you’re after.

Who’s Got Time for Examples?

Well, we hope you do. But whose time is it? Your time. We hope you’ll spend it looking at these examples of how to use who’s and whose.

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

If you have that tune stuck in your head the rest of the day, you can blame us.

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Who’s against spicing up a grammar lesson with some ’90s comedy?

The People Behind the Tusks: A Who’s Who of the Cast of Warcraft

(moviepilot.com)

Consequently, their roles had to be filled by CIA officers whose identities had not been revealed to the Russians.

(Tom Clancy, Commander in Chief, 124)

Bessie carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw.

(Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 50)

This one’s worth an extra glance: “who” in all its forms generally refers to animate beings, but in the possessive there’s no equivalent for inanimate objects like Bessie’s lantern. The very awkward alternative is “Bessie carried a lantern, the light of which glanced on wet steps.” Not good.

And finally, a who’ve for good measure:

[They’re] Kids from wealthier districts, where winning is a huge honor, who’ve been trained their whole lives for this.

(Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, 36)

Yes, that means who have.

Who’s Clear on Who’s and Whose?

By now, anyone who has read this far, we hope. Just in case, let’s review:

• Both of these words are versions of the interrogative pronoun who.
• Who’s is a contraction of who + is or who + has.
• Whose means “belonging to whom,” and occasionally “of which.”

Whose grammar got a boost from this read? Now you’re someone who’s ready to use these pronouns in style.

5 More Endangered Words

New words come into use, old words slowly fade away. It’s a natural, all-too-familiar cycle. We’ve already covered words that may be headed toward extinction. Here are five more words in various stages of endangerment. But, who knows? Maybe some of them can still be saved—but should we save all of them?

Tag isn’t a word that’ll disappear anytime soon, as long as things still cost money and come with price tags. But in the United States, and in the state of Virginia especially, tag is a slang term for a pine needle. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, this meaning of tag might soon disappear, and it’s one of the fifty regional slang words they’ve included in their endangered words list. If more people using a word means the word is less likely to die out, tag and other dialectical words might need to go mainstream in order to survive.

While we’re on the subject of dialects, when whole dialects die out, they take plenty of words and expressions with them. Young people in the United Kingdom are not particularly interested in Cockney rhyming slang, so it’s foreseeable that in the future, phrases like apples and pears, meaning “stairs,” or china plate, meaning “mate,” might not be heard, except in old TV shows.

Often enough, we see a word disappear because the thing it was used for no longer exists. That’s what happened with drysalter. Drysalters were people who sold chemicals, and things like glue and paint. This profession existed up to the early twentieth century, but in 2011, Collins Dictionary decided that the word is so far gone it should be removed from their dictionaries.

Marvellous is having a hard time in the UK. According to a study performed by Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press, the word appeared in spoken English 155 times per million words just twenty years ago. Now, it’s down to two appearances per million words. The culprit seems to be the Brits’ willingness to adopt synonyms commonly used in American English. In this case, it’s awesome that’s taking the place of marvellous.

Some words fade from everyday language because of changing societal attitudes. Macalester College’s More Than Words Campaign aims to eradicate the use of certain words in an offensive context, including spaz. In the US, this word is fairly benign—it simply means “klutz.” But in the UK, it is a deeply offensive insult toward people with disabilities. So, maybe this is one that we should let go of.

What do you think? Should we keep marvelous, tag, and drysalter alive?

Why You NEED to Write Every Day

Alzheimer’s, dementia, and severe memory loss affect memory, thinking, language, and behavior—even beyond expected decreases in function from the typical aging process. But according to a recent study by the Medical Journal of the American Academy of Neurology, there are some strategies to help you avoid this type of cognitive decline that you can begin working on now. First and foremost: Be a bookworm!

Scientists have found that people who are consistently engaged in mentally stimulating activities–like reading–throughout their lives have a significantly slower decline in memory loss.

Methodology:

Scientists examined 264 people around 89-years-old, following them for a total of six years. Each person was given memory tests each year throughout the study. The participants were also surveyed on the number of mentally stimulating activities they participated in throughout their childhood and adult life.

Following the death of each participant, scientists autopsied their brains for physical evidence of dementia–like brain lesions and tangles. The collective results of the surveys, memory tests, and brain autopsies found that the rate of decline was reduced by 32 percent in people with frequent mental activity in late life.

Aside from reading, what are some easy, stimulating activities that you can do to slow down the process of memory loss? At Grammarly, we believe that writing tops the list! It’s a great way to process personal thoughts or dilemmas, and to engage in critical thinking.

Here are some ways that you can encourage yourself to write on a daily basis:

• Write letters to your future self. Try drafting one letter per month and opening it one year later during that same month. In the letter, describe the goals you hope to accomplish during that month, what your challenges were, and what you are hoping will transpire by the same time next year. Also use this exercise as a motivation to check things off of your personal “bucket list.”
• Start a blog. Find a topic you are passionate about like gardening, politics, or fashion, and write about it. Set a personal goal to post a new blog entry at least once a week. Challenge yourself to write more informative, engaging articles that don’t just interest you, but will also educate your potential readers.
• Write a book about your life story. Not only will this boost your memory of things that happened in the past, but documenting your life may also serve as a helpful resource in the future. Or, if writing about the past is too challenging, try starting a diary or a journal to document life’s activities moving forward.
• Write articles about hot topics. Watch news programs and then write a story to support what you’ve watched. This will help you recall facts and important information, not to mention to become more informed about what’s going on in the world today.

There are many other activities outside of writing that can also boost brain activity. Many people use memory games, crossword puzzles, and other word games to continuously challenge their minds. The best combination of cognitive stimulation includes a healthy lifestyle and a commitment to lifelong learning. Combined, these two elements can help to keep your mind active well into your golden years.