How to Use Glassdoor to Search for a Job

Every tool Glassdoor has created has been done with the intention to “remove some of the opaqueness in the hiring transaction, helping people make better decisions about where to go to work,” as Glassdoor’s CEO Robert Hohman wrote in 2015. With over 45 million reviews, salaries and insights, and over 11 million job listings, Glassdoor harnesses this information to allow job seekers to make informed choices about where they want to work. This includes displaying reviews of benefits, management and everyday experience at a company, as well as tools like Know Your Worth, which gives a personalized salary estimate based on individual factors like experience and location.

Creating a Glassdoor Profile is the jumping-off point for your job search. Your Glassdoor profile includes your resume, a short personal introduction, a list of your professional skills and expertise, your contact information, and, if you choose, a profile picture. This information is visible to employers, and allows you to apply for many jobs on Glassdoor with just a few clicks. But don’t worry — any reviews you leave will still be private!

Now that you’ve uploaded your resume, it’s time to get searching. Glassdoor’s job search tool allows you to adjust across categories like location, salary range, date posted, distance, job type and more to bring you personalized job suggestions. Since each job listing opens a preview pane, there’s no need to hop between tabs — you can browse a company’s ratings, basic information, average salaries and benefits in the same pane as the job description. That way, you can immediately see if the company information matches up with what you’re looking for.

If you want to get extra-specific with your job search, the “More” tab opens up a detailed list of criteria you can filter your search with, including company rating, size, industry, ability to “Easy Apply” and more. And if you see a job you like, but don’t have time to apply right away, clicking the “Save” button will keep the job on file for you. Then you don’t need to worry about losing the posting, and you can go back and look at it later.

Sometimes, scrolling through job listings every day to find the one that’s perfect gets tiresome. That’s where job alerts come in. By entering basic information about the type of job you’re looking for and your location into Glassdoor’s job alert tool, relevant jobs are delivered to your inbox each day, with no need for extra work on your part.

Ideally, you want to find a job that pays you fairly — one that offers you a salary that is at (or above!) the market value of your skill set. Glassdoor built the Know Your Worth tool so that job seekers and employees can know exactly what salary they deserve according to their unique circumstances (job title, location, years of experience, etc.). Knowing your worth can help you filter the jobs you’re searching for within a certain salary range. Since many jobs on Glassdoor include an estimated salary range, you can tell right away whether a position will fit with your desired pay grade.

So you’ve flagged some job postings and feel keen on pressing the “Easy Apply” button. Before you do that, you might want to take a little more time to research. If a company has an 18% “Recommend to a Friend” rating, for example, it may be a cause for pause. Taking the time to read through reviews that current and past employees have written on a company can give you a powerful impression of whether this company is really a place you can see yourself. In addition, if anything sticks out to you in the reviews, the information you gather can be a springboard for questions you ask the person who interviews you. You can also browse reviews for information that can help you fill in our “What to Look for When Researching a Company” checklist, such as scoops on office culture, employee perks and company values.

While some benefits will be clearly stated on a company’s website, Glassdoor can give you the inside scoop on benefits of all kinds offered to employees. This includes financial benefits like 401(k) plans and performance bonuses and family benefits like parental leave and the ability to work from home, as well as vacation and sick leave policies, mobile phone discounts, gym memberships, and free lunch, and professional support like job training and tuition assistance. All of these can seriously factor into your decision to even apply for a job. In addition, the “Benefits” tab of any company’s page includes hand-written reviews from current and former employees about individual benefits. These can contain valuable information about a company’s approach to benefits. For example, if a company technically gives 20 days of paid vacation per year, but employees write that there’s a culture of being discouraged from taking your full vacation allowance, you might want to take that into consideration.

How you apply for jobs on Glassdoor depends on what the employer requires. Jobs labeled “Easy Apply” mean that the job application is housed entirely within the Glassdoor site, so just a few clicks of a button will have your application sent straight into the company’s hands. This might be the shortest job application you’ve ever had to send out! Other jobs listings will redirect you to the employer’s website, where further instructions about how to apply are listed.

Once you apply, all you have to do is wait for the interview invitations to come rolling in!

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