The Ultimate Job Hunter’s Guide to Using Glassdoor
Part 2: How to read employee reviews
The best part of using Glassdoor is reading through employee reviews. Because they’re anonymous, you get insight into the nitty gritty company drama and can read honest opinions on what it’s really like to work for this employer.
Sometimes, the reviews will get you pumped up about your upcoming interview. Other times, you’ll see that you need to run away fast. Part 2 of my guide to using Glassdoor will help you read between the lines of employee reviews so you can make an educated decision about your next employer.
The Ultimate Job Hunter’s Guide to Using Glassdoor is a 3 part series
Part 1: Company overview – trends over time, ratings by demographics, and ratings for work/life balance, culture, senior management, and more.
Part 2: Employee reviews – weighing the value of a review, looking for consistent praise or criticism, and identifying emotionally loaded words and statements.
Part 3: Salaries, interviews, and benefits – filtering for your country or state plus experience level, what the interview feedback tells us, and reviewing benefits that are important to you.
Part 2: Getting the Most out of Employee Reviews
Before you start making decisions about a potential employer, be aware that reviewers are not all experts in writing or communicating their thoughts. Some will leave detailed explanations with examples that highlight their position. Others will leave a rating and write one sentence per section.
Don’t take all feedback at face value. Some reviews will be super helpful and shine a light on details that are important to you. But there will be former employees who feel slighted by the company if they are laid off or let go and some problems may only affect one department or location.
There are a few key signals to help you decide whether a review should be factored into your employment decisions. If the review doesn’t give enough information, or their feedback avoids giving any praise or criticism, take note.
But Tahera, what if a company really is great (or terrible) to work for? Wouldn’t these reviews be helpful? Yes, they would!
Here’s a hint, look for consistency across reviews.
If multiple reviews say that this is the best company they’ve worked for, that’s a great sign. If most reviewers say that their colleagues are the best part of the job, that’s also a great sign.
Same goes for negative feedback. If more than just a few reviewers say the CEO lacks empathy or micromanages, that’s a red flag. If multiple reviews say that compensation is below market rate, that’s another red flag.
Key signals
Review length – The longer, the better
well thought out feedback means that they care about delivering valuable information to potential new hires. If they didn’t write even one full sentence, why are they bothering?
Time at company – Take with a grain of salt
Newer employees can be very positive because they’re in the honeymoon phase. But no company is perfect. The reviewer just hasn’t encountered the problems yet. Seasoned employees can offer valuable context… but can also be jaded if the company has changed a lot since they first started.
Empty sections – dock points from this review
Give less weight to reviews with empty sections. If they won’t give advice to management or say whether they recommend working there, they may be posting just because they were asked to do so by HR.
Vague terms – these need context
As humans, we assume that other people have the same definitions that we do. That’s not the case. Terms like “politics” and “culture”can mean anything. Politics can be about favoritism, nepotism, unfair promotion rules, or refer to a hierarchical business structure based on control.
Culture can refer to employee retention efforts, boy’s club mentality, work/life balance, and how well departments collaborate with each other.
Hostile word choice – cruelty is not a good look
When companies are going through difficult times and reviews start to decline, you’ll get some emotionally charged feedback. When someone defending the business calls their colleagues “dead weight,” “bad apples,” or says, “if you don’t like it, you can leave,” that’s a red flag. Who’s to say they won’t call you dead weight in the future?
The same applies to feedback for management. If they refer to the CEO as a dictator, blast their political affiliation, or call them a slave driver, take note. This person may feel slighted but that doesn’t mean they’re feedback is 100% accurate.
Start with the right filters for your needs
When you first land on the Reviews page of Glassdoor, you’re presented with search and filter options. Glassdoor automatically adds filters for full time and part time roles, and defaults to English (since I’m in the US).
At large companies with lots of office locations and departments, it’s worth narrowing down your search parameters by location and job function. For smaller companies, these filters can be too narrow, like if there are only 5 sales people out of 40 employees. You may be left with only one review.
Reading reviews from other job roles has its benefits. Reviews from other departments can give you insight into the ethos of the company like:
Broader corporate culture
Quality of interdepartmental teamwork
Diverse viewpoints
Pain points felt across the business
Finally, sort reviews by most recent. Glassdoor defaults to sorting by popular. Company culture changes over time so sorting by most recent gives you the best view of how things are going right now.
Examples of useful and not useful reviews
1 star review - useful
This employee put in the time to write out their feedback and explain their stance. They acknowledge that the company is a good fit for some, but it’s not great for those that want to be creative in their job. They also gave detailed advice to management about how to retain talented people.
Many reviews bring up “politics” but unless they define it, it could mean anything. Perhaps this reviewer feels that their management played favorites. Or maybe management promotes people they like and that fit a certain mold for gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic background. In this case, it sounds like there is a problem with people stealing credit for other’s work.
5 star review - not very useful
This reviewer works in a role that is paid through a compensation plan. If you’re not a salesperson, or in a related role, this review won’t tell you much about pay.
The phrase “transition from startup to established company” is misleading. When I look at the company’s overview, it’s listed as publicly traded with over 1,000 employees. Sounds like this is a way to cover up bad behavior by the business. Finally, they left mysterious advice to management. I read it as, be kind, but let people know if their job is at risk.
No company is flawless and any review that ignores the cons section or positions a “not really a con” as a con, isn’t giving you a healthy view of the business. This employee has been there for over three years, surely there is something that is subpar at this company. They’re doing you a disservice with this review.
4 star review – useful
Feedback about colleagues and their treatment at work are positive and it sounds like this person likes the product and go-to-market strategy in place. They’re excited about the future of the business.
This reviewer has a positive tone and is excited for the future. The vibe I’m getting is that, if you were to work here, you’ll have nice colleagues but may feel under-appreciated for your work and experience burnout. The way they bring up how some people claim success for their work, makes me think that there is a particular instance that bothers this reviewer, and it may not be a trend.
What’s especially noteworthy is the reference to staff turnover and morale. These are good clues. Read other reviews and see if you can get the full story on why staff are leaving and the cause of low morale. Joining a team of nice but exhausted peers will affect your success and job satisfaction.
5 star review - Not useful at all
This review offers almost no guidance and gives me the impression that this person felt compelled to leave a positive review, but was not invested in giving feedback. Perhaps they just wanted to add one more 5 star review to the total company score. Maybe HR is pushing hard to improve their score because it’s affecting company hiring goals.
We don’t know how long this employee has worked at this company or how they feel about the business and its future. They gave zero advice to management. All I've learned is that things move fast at this company. Leave this review out of your decision making process.
Connect back to the company overview
Remember the graph showing the overall trend that we covered in part 1 of this guide? Connect all of the reviews you found useful back to the company overview. When did ratings start trending downwards? 6 months ago? A year ago? When did they start improving?
All of this information becomes incredibly useful once you schedule your first interview. Ask your interview panel about the most concerning feedback. Point out any downward or upward trends and ask them what they think about is the cause.
Next, I’ll share Part 3 of the Ultimate Job Hunter’s Guide to Using Glassdoor which discusses salaries, interviews, and benefits.