In this Episode Matt Alder talks to Joe Wiggins, Senior PR manager Europe at Glassdoor.
Glassdoor describes itself as the world’s most transparent career community that is changing the way people find jobs, and companies recruit top talent. Over the last few years it has expanded operations significantly from its original base in California and now has a presence in the UK, Germany and France with more country launches being planned.
In the interview Matt and Joe discuss the reception Glassdoor has had in these countries and the types of companies whose employees are engaging with the site the most. They talk through how the transparency of Glassdoor is making companies think differently about their employer brand and Joe gives some great tips on what employers can do to ensure they are managing their reputation in the most impactful way.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:17]:
Hi, everyone and welcome to episode five of the Recruiting Future podcast. Today’s interview is with Glassdoor. I was particularly excited to interview Glassdoor. I last spoke to them in a video interview three years ago on a trip to San Francisco. Since then they’ve expanded into Europe and I was keen to find out how that had gone and what the reaction had been in various European countries. It’s quite a wide ranging interview. There’s a number of topics that we discussed, but of particular interest might be the section around how Glassdoor is changing the way that employers need to think about employer branding with a level of transparency that it’s offering. Towards the end of the interview, there’s some great practical tips on what you can do as an employer to get the most out of Glassdoor in terms of enhancing your reputation. So here’s the interview, it’s with Joe Wiggins, who is the senior PR manager for Glassdoor in Europe.
Matt Alder [00:01:17]:
Hi and welcome to another Recruiting Future podcast interview today. Today I’m talking to Joe Wiggins from Glassdoor. Joe, would you like to introduce yourself?
Joe Wiggins [00:01:28]:
Yes, of course. Yes. So I’m Joe and I head up the PR and comms for Glassdoor in Europe and currently that covers uk, France and Germany. And yeah, it’s my job really to get the word out about Glassdoor in those countries and to sort of educate people of what Glassdoor is and what the opportunities are. So I guess I cover kind of PR and social media and content marketing and that kind of stuff.
Matt Alder [00:01:56]:
Fantastic. I mean, that’s really interesting because I first kind of came across or met some people from Glassdoor a couple of years ago out in San Francisco. I remember I sort of did a video interview out there and very much you guys were talking about how you were going to expand in Europe and what you thought the likely reaction would be. Sort of. Now you’ve done that, what has the reaction been in countries like the uk, France and Germany to the whole concept of Glass Store?
Joe Wiggins [00:02:27]:
Well, obviously we’re still very new in Europe generally, and particularly Germany and France, but just sort of dealing with the UK specifically. First of all, I think generally here in the uk, we’re probably about a year and a half, maybe two years behind the US in terms of, you know, general awareness and adoption and that kind of thing. So we, we’ve really been active, fully active in the UK for about 12 months now. We’ve been actively selling to employers. And we’ve been actively kind of building the community and getting people to come to the site and add new content and all that sort of stuff. I would say that broadly, people are really, really excited about Glassdoor. I very rarely come across someone who, you know, doesn’t see that it’s a great idea and doesn’t see that it’s, I guess, an inevitable kind of consequence of the wave of transparency that is blowing through all sorts of different industries. And it’s really just the next, I think, evolution of what happened with social media and that sort of thing and the customer service industry about seven years ago. Six. Seven years ago. This is just the next step, except it’s your employees talking about you as a brand rather than your customers. So I think it’s good that we’ve already been through that process to a certain extent, but I would say that there is still some hesitation as to people understanding where the content comes from and what they should actually do with it. And one of the questions that seems to be on the lips of HR recruitment people in the UK at the moment is who should own Glassdoor? So who should be responsible for it? What function within a company? Is it an HR issue? Is it a reputation issue? And I suppose who should pay for it as well is the question that people are asking. But generally, before we go into these countries, we have quite a lot of content and so we already have a certain level of organic awareness and content already, which is great. We’re not starting from a standing start in any country that we launch into.
Matt Alder [00:05:05]:
Fantastic.
Joe Wiggins [00:05:06]:
The reaction has been good in France and Germany as well. We only launched in Germany just a few weeks ago, really in January, and already we’re really, really pleased with all the key metrics that we look at, like site visits and new content and all that sort of stuff. So it certainly exceeded our expectations. We found that the German audience in particular are coming to the site and spending quite a lot of time on the site, being quite thorough and looking at all different aspects like jobs, content, salaries. And salaries particularly is quite a novelty for Germany. I’m from France too. But for Germany, where it’s quite a taboo to talk about salary, it’s probably the information that no one wants to talk about, but everyone wants to know.
Matt Alder [00:05:57]:
Yeah, of course.
Joe Wiggins [00:05:58]:
So, yeah, I would say broadly, very, very positive, both from. And of course, you know, job seekers love it.
Matt Alder [00:06:07]:
Yeah.
Joe Wiggins [00:06:08]:
But it’s, I think, naturally taking time to filter through larger organizations and people to really adopt it with gusto.
Matt Alder [00:06:19]:
Okay.
Joe Wiggins [00:06:19]:
But yeah, we’re very interested.
Matt Alder [00:06:21]:
That’s cool. And so I suppose, sort of coming back to. Coming back to the uk, because you’ve been here a bit longer, you know, you mentioned content that was all there organically, all that kind of stu. How much content is there from jobseekers and employers, sorry, employees reviewing their companies in the uk and is there a particular size or type of company that you tend to get the most for, or is it across the board?
Joe Wiggins [00:06:49]:
Well, we’ve got, roughly speaking, about 250,000 bits of content for the UK, so that’s reviews and salaries and interview questions and that sort of thing. And that covers around about 25,000 employers in the UK. So, yeah, pretty decent numbers. And it’s a range of different types of companies, but we’re more likely to have more content on larger companies because.
Matt Alder [00:07:18]:
They’Ve got more employees.
Joe Wiggins [00:07:20]:
Yeah, more employees and also international companies. So as word of kind of glassdoors spread, it can spread within a company. So off the top of my head, some of the brands from the UK that we would have a lot of content on would be Tesco and Asda and other retailers, banks like rbs, companies like sky and Vodafone and all sorts of companies. It’s not necessarily skewed towards any particular industry, but we do have quite a lot of data on business services companies, consultancies like Deloitte and EY and the big accountancy firms, financial services, particularly banks, retailers, and also a lot of tech, tech and IT firms as well. But we have reviews from, you know, people that sort of stack shelves or work in a warehouse for Sainsbury’s just as much as we do sort of analysts that work at work at Deloitte. So it’s quite a range, really. You know, lots of reviews and postmen as well.
Matt Alder [00:08:37]:
Interesting, interesting. I mean, I mean, that is what I think what make. That’s what makes it, I think, a fantastic, you know, resource for employers as well, in terms of obviously, you know, finding out about what people really think about their work experience. And I mean, obviously this is having, I think this whole kind of move towards transparency is having a significant effect on the kind of, whole concept of what’s an employer brand. I mean, how do you think, you know, Glassdoor is going about changing the way that employers should think about their employer brand?
Joe Wiggins [00:09:20]:
I think it’s changing employer brand because it’s the voice of the crowd which is coming through now. So the biggest thing that employers need to think about is your employer brand is not your employer value proposition. Think the thing that you want people to say, it’s what people really say. And if those two things, your idea of the brand and then what’s actually being said sort of at the coalface, if those things don’t match, then I think that is the interesting piece here. It’s making those two things match. And Glassdoor is merely sort of opening the lid really and shining a light on that potential discrepancy. And you know, we always kind of say like a consumer brand, if you like, you know, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. And that’s what people are doing on Glassdoor. They’re talking about you as in you, the employer, your brand under the sort of the freedom of transparency and anonymity. So I think that is the interesting piece to, to how employer branding is changing and that leads to the next sort of step, which is employers need to be active and engaging with this community and a part of that dialogue. And I think it’s that two way kind of dialogue which is really important now. And going back to what I was saying earlier about social media, companies should already be doing that with their consumer brand, but just now apply those same principles that they’ve learned to employ a brand and how to improve that. So I think it’s really exciting and there are lots and lots of companies who have employees who are very happy with their job and are really, really happy to share that on Glassdoor. What a fantastic endorsement and actual piece of marketing for you as an employer to have people unprompted saying it’s a great place to work and you really should be leveraging that.
Matt Alder [00:11:37]:
Absolutely. Just before I kind of started recording this, you were talking about conversations you’ve been having with PR agencies where who were kind of realizing that Glassdoor had a wider role in terms of company reputation. So can you sort of talk us through that a little bit in terms of how you’re seeing the sort of effect of Glassdoor beyond the recruiting and HR silos within organisations?
Joe Wiggins [00:12:08]:
Yeah, well, I, as a PR person myself, I like to reach out to my peers in the PR industry and I think that there is a really important point here about company reputation and that sites like Bar Store are not just looked at by potential employees and job seekers, but it could be any kind of stakeholder, it could be clients or potential clients, it could be partners, suppliers, it could be journalists, it could be all sorts of influencers, it could be investors, it could be shareholders. So last year it kind of dawned on me when I saw Venture Capital companies tweeting that as part of their due diligence, before they invest money in a company, they’re checking that company out on Glassdoor to see, to get the inside track on what it’s like to work there. And clearly if you’re going to invest money in a company, you’re going to want to make sure that the staff that are producing whatever it is, the goods or the service, are happy in their job, because we all know that happy workforce is more productive and stays longer and all that kind of stuff. So it actually goes way beyond HR and talent acquisition issues and opportunities to part of your broader suite of managing your corporate reputation. And that’s why I think PR people should be all over Glassdoor and should be, if they’re in an agency, using it for their own purposes. That is, to attract the best PR professionals to come work for them, but also to be able to advise their clients on how to best use Glassdoor to leverage it for their brand. So, yeah, I think that we’ve only just scratched the surface here, but it’s important to remember that it could be absolutely anyone looking at Glassdoor and for multiple different purposes. So that’s why I think it’s really important to, as I said before, engage and be a part of it and don’t be scared of negative reviews and all that kind of stuff. But it’s natural for a company to be a little bit fearful, I suppose, of something new. I think in that sense we’re probably, you know, like I said, about a year, year and a half, a couple of years behind the US in terms of this sort of thing being adopted and becoming mainstream. Still early days here.
Matt Alder [00:14:58]:
And what would your, you know, what’s your advice to a company that has very few reviews or, you know, worse, has, you know, reviews that are quite negative? Is there anything that they can do? I know you obviously have sort of various products and services and things like that, but what would you kind of advise in general to a company who had realized the importance of Glassdoor but didn’t really have a, you know, a particularly good platform to build on, as it were?
Joe Wiggins [00:15:28]:
Yeah, well, I think our research shows that a job seeker will make up their mind about a company with only reading maybe four to seven reviews. So actually you don’t necessarily need hundreds and hundreds of reviews. And clearly if you’re a small to middle sized company, then that’s not even going to be an option for you. So I would say that if you have not very many reviews, then encourage your people to leave Reviews, particularly if you only have a small number and they’re less than flattering. I would encourage companies to balance that out by getting the people that are happy where they work. And presumably that is the case to start leaving reviews and just to kind of equalize it out a little bit. And one of the things we tend to ask people if they have a small number of reviews and those reviews are not great, is what people are saying. True. This is not just about the gloss and the polish and the reputation, but do you actually have a potential problem in the business, something that you can improve and that you need to actually face up to? So that’s an important point.
Matt Alder [00:16:57]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Wiggins [00:16:58]:
I would encourage people, absolutely encourage your people, your brand ambassadors to leave reviews, but also take out a free employer account and monitor those reviews and track them and start responding to reviews. So off the top of my head, one example I was looking at earlier today is Virgin Holidays. They only have, I think, 15 reviews on Glassdoor at this early stage, but the MD of Virgin Holidays is responding to some of those reviews and fantastic, which is great. And I think that is the way forward. Because if you’ve got a negative review and, you know, bear in mind something I always say to people, this is. That’s one person’s opinion.
Matt Alder [00:17:45]:
Yeah.
Joe Wiggins [00:17:46]:
This is an aggregation of people’s opinions and different people view their job in different ways and everyone is going to have a different opinion about what is good and what is bad. So I would say don’t fear those negative reviews. And if you respond, it really takes the sting out of it. I think it neutralizes it to a certain extent. And it just looks so much better for anyone looking at that. It looks like you care. It looks like you are acknowledging feedback and comments and kind of being brave enough to say something back. And potentially you show that you’re doing something about it. And we found that around about 69, 70% of people, jobseekers, their opinion of a company that they see responding to a negative review, their opinion shoots right up when they see that kind of openness from the employer. So I would say, yeah, encourage reviews and respond to reviews and embrace the transparency.
Matt Alder [00:18:51]:
Really fantastic. That’s fantastic advice. So, final question. So you know, what’s next for you guys? Where’s Glassdoor? What are you doing next? Where are you going? What’s the next sort of 18 months look like?
Joe Wiggins [00:19:08]:
Well, we’re on a really exciting kind of hyper growth phase at the moment. It’s still early days in Europe, but definitely going to see more announcements about new country launches from us this year and beyond. We’re working on some of those right now. So watch this space. Cool. And yeah, I think we can already see from the level of content that we have in different countries around Europe today particularly, there’s a hunger for this information. And so we’re going to go for it and really try to kind of produce localized sites and apps for people in different countries. So that’s what we’re focusing on at the moment. Fantastic. We’ve raised a bunch of money for international expansion, which is really, really exciting. So, yeah, that’s probably where we’re focused at the moment. Really, really important to grow the community and to get to that critical mass of content. So, yeah, we’re really focused in UK and Europe about getting new members and getting new content and that kind of thing. But yeah, lots to come, I think, in the next year, 18 months and beyond as well.
Matt Alder [00:20:28]:
Fantastic. Well, thank you very, very much for your time and thanks for, for sharing your thoughts with us.
Joe Wiggins [00:20:34]:
That’s a pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:20:36]:
Joe Wiggins from Glassdoor there, thanks very much for listening to episode five of the Recruiting Future Podcast. You can subscribe to future Episodes on itunes or indeed any podcasting app. You can find out more about the show and listen to past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. thanks again for listening.
