If you look at top websites -- like Wikipedia and craigslist -- a common theme is user participation. It certainly can be a powerful thing.
Well, this is what Glassdoor.com is trying to do. Actually, this week the company announced a $6.5 million venture capital round (the total amount raised since its founding is $9.5 million). The investors include: Sutter Hill Ventures and Benchmark Capital.
So far, Glassdoor.com has attracted 115,000 contributions from its user base (the site launched in June). Basically, they have provided information about their employers, such as on salaries, culture and so on. There are even ratings of company CEOs.
All in all, it's a neat idea. After all, making the decision on a new job is critical -- but often fraught with uncertainty. So why now allow the community to help out?
According to the Glassdoor blog:
"Now more than ever, people want to know what it's really like inside a company and more and more employees are sharing details about their jobs and work environments. With increased resources, employees and employers can improve upon the decisions they make for their career and for their company. In this environment, in particular, we think this investment sends a strong signal about the value of the information available on Glassdoor.com to people around the globe."
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-01-2008 @ 3:50AM
Rajendra said...
This is really interesting. Another website that is looking to raise money is http://www.jobeehive.com which is doing pretty well in Asia.. especially India.
12-06-2008 @ 3:26PM
john said...
GlassDoor is a cool site with good information. It seems, however, the niche industry sites have a better handle on the hiring trends and compensation benchmarks. For instance, if someone is looking for hedge fund jobs, it would seem http://www.JobSearchDigest.com/hedge_fund_jobs would be a better source of information.
Now, not all industries have these very niche sites available. In that case, glassdoor is a great service.
John