Glassdoor ($PRIVATE:GLASSDOOR) is one of the most-trafficked sites when it comes to hiring, recruiting, and workplace reviews. While it's primarily known for letting people review companies anonymously, it also helps a lot of people determine out where to apply, how salaries measure up, and even connect with current employees to get the inside scoop on workplace culture. Lots of companies rely on Glassdoor for their information, data, and toolkit. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a freezing effect on almost every business in terms of hiring.
As a result, Glassdoor laid off 30% of its workforce, around 300 people. CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong wrote a memo to the company explaining the decision: "Employers as a whole have dramatically reduced their recruiting, and it is not clear when this will recover." Adding salt to the wound is the fact that business for Glassdoor has slowed, and the website itself cannot hire at the same rate. The careers page only lists nine open positions, down from the hundreds it once had.
When we write stories about these sudden layoffs or furloughs, it usually takes a while to see the results in the LinkedIn data. Since people can list any company as their employer, it takes longer for people out of work to truthfully change their information, until they find new work. Or they plum forget.
But with Glassdoor, there was an immediate freefall in total employee count, dropping 8% in less than two weeks.
Things aren't much better on social for Glassdoor: The last three years have seen a slowdown in the number of followers, even seeing a declining rate in 2018. Our Facebook 'Talking About' data (not shown here, try our demo for full access) shows a dropoff in Facebook engagement and a plateau in likes overall for 2020.
Thankfully, people still really like the product, and use the mobile app versions the most. The Google Play Store version is at a 4.6/5 and the Apple App Store version is still getting a ton of ratings in lately, with a 4.7/5 average review score.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.