Glassdoor is one of the most popular and powerful professional sites in the world thanks to its emphasis on anonymous company reviews and its vast database of salary information. That makes it a crucial tool for anyone who wants to find a new job.
It's a complex site with loads of features, though, so it can be daunting if you're not familiar with an online job hunt, or if you've not used Glassdoor before. If that's the case, read on – we've compiled our top Glassdoor tips so you can make the most out of the site and find the best job possible.
And if you need more inspiration, click here for our verdict on the best job sites of 2021, discover our favorite freelance websites if you'd like to consider self-employment, or read our in-depth review of Glassdoor.
Explore company reviews
One of Glassdoor's most significant advantages is its wealth of anonymous company reviews. This is crucial if you really want to do your research before you apply for a job – it can provide you with an unparalleled look at your potential place of work and will clearly highlight its advantages and drawbacks.
Head to the page of any big company, and you'll see what we mean. You can browse the tens of thousands of reviews that you'll find on the site for any big company, and filters for job function, department, and location make it easier to see reviews that are more applicable to your job hunt.
Reviewers give company ratings, too, and you can drill down into this data to see what people think of the firm's culture, diversity, management, benefits, and career progression. Graphs show you how those ratings trend over time, and you can filter ratings by demographics so you can see how different communities feel about your potential new employer.
Those company pages don't just have reviews. Glassdoor's company pages detail each firm's size, revenue, locations, and overview. You can see any pledges and certifications that the company has made about diversity, inclusion, charity initiatives, and environmentalism.
Potential employees can ask questions and get answers from current staff members, and if you dive deeper into company pages you can get detailed information about benefits.
Any good company will maintain their Glassdoor page, too, with information, posts, updates, and information about their work and culture. If a company does a decent job with this, it's a good sign, but it's a red flag if they don't bother.
Glassdoor also has a handy feature that allows job seekers to compare different companies. Put a couple of names into the site's search box and you can quickly see each company's ratings, salaries, open vacancies and notable pros and cons that have been gleaned from Glassdoor's submitted reviews.
Study salaries
Glassdoor isn't just about company reviews – it's got a wealth of salary data, too, and if you do your research here then you'll be in a better negotiating position if you do decide to apply for a job.
Search for a job on Glassdoor's salary module, and you can see the average pay for this job in your area alongside the distribution of salaries from low to high in your industry. Users can see how salaries tend to increase with seniority and the amount earned by people in similar positions.
Impressively, all of this data can be filtered by industry, company size and the amount of experience the staff member may have.
Start the job search
The same parent company owns Glassdoor and Indeed, so you'll see the same job listings on both sites. That makes it easy to browse a huge database of job listings on Glassdoor.
You can filter listings by the type of job, salary, location, and loads of other data points, including seniority level, company ratings, and jobs that allow home and remote working options. You'll certainly find more filtering here than you will on most other job boards. You can create job alerts that will flag potential jobs as soon as they're posted, too.
Prepare for the interview
Glassdoor is a crucial tool if you need to research before an interview. You don't just get the site's wealth of company information to peruse – people review their interviews, too.
This means that you can see exactly what the interview process is likely to include, from questions and length to the feedback and onboarding procedure if an interviewee eventually took a job at the business. Ratings easily display if people had positive or negative experiences, and you can also see how people got their interviews, which is handy if you want to gauge with application methods have been more successful than others.
You can search through interview reviews and filter them by department, location, and whether the applicant received a job offer.
This is an enormously powerful part of Glassdoor that can make the difference between success and failure before your next job interview.
Use the careers hub
Glassdoor's career hub has a selection of helpful features, too. If you search for a job, you'll see an overview of its duties and responsibilities alongside links to open positions and companies that often hire for that particular position. You'll see salary data based on numbers from across different industries, too.
You can also get plenty of help from a broad range of articles about relevant professional subjects, and Glassdoor's data suggests fast-growing careers and the most popular interview questions for loads of different job roles. That's all useful if you're not entirely sure about what sort of job you hope to find.
Open the door
Glassdoor is one of the most interesting and powerful job sites on the planet – no other professional site offers its in-depth data points, the anonymous company reviews, or its sheer wealth of salary information.
All of that makes it a key tool in the job hunters armory, and it's a crucial option if you want to get a proper picture of any potential employer before you apply and head to an interview. If you're not making the most of Glassdoor, you're missing out.
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