Referring to online reviews is no longer restricted to restaurant booking, hairstylists, or your neighborhood dog walker. More and more people are using job review sites like Glassdoor.com to review their next new job. Little wonder then that the increasing traffic has helped drive valuations upwards as the company gets ready to go public.

Photo Credit: Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office /Flickr.com 

Glassdoor’s Offerings

Sausalito-based Glassdoor was founded by Expedia veterans Rich Barton and Tim Hesse and Zillow co-founder Robert Hohman. The company was founded to help people get access to anonymous reviews about potential employers and insights into job interview questions. But it has graduated to more than that. It now allows people to search for jobs and to establish a professional network. The site has more than 30 million users globally, accessing over 10 million reviews for more than 540,000 companies.

Glassdoor operates on a freemium model. Individual users can access the site for free to read and post reviews on companies and even search for jobs. Employers have the option of selecting a paid-for enhanced option that includes features such as access to brand awareness and analytic tools, recruitment engine, the ability to respond to reviews, and even advertise.

Glassdoor’s Financials

Glassdoor may not primarily be a job search engine, but job search is a big part of its offering. And online job search industry is seeing a big upheaval. Recently, Microsoft announced the $26.2 billion acquisition of job search and professional networking site LinkedIn. Another job search site Simply Hired recently shut down after it was reportedly acquired by its parent Indeed.

Meanwhile, in its reviews section, Glassdoor is also facing several issues of user discontent. Since the company does not validate any user information, it is easier for people to fake reviews. The only cleaning that its team of content reviewers does is that of removing malicious and obscene language from reviews. Its paying customers feel that they should be able to remove untrue content based on their premium status. But Glassdoor does not allow customers to do that. Good stance, as it would take away all authenticity from the service.