96% of job seekers say it's important to work for a company that embraces transparency, but transparency and honesty is not necessarily something we associate with the world of business. That was until the likes of Rich Barton (Founder of Expedia, Zillow and Co-founder of Glassdoor) and Robert Hohman (Co-Founder of Glassdoor) ensured transparency became a business must!
Barton's first brain child was Microsoft's spin off travel unit, Expedia. The website completely changed the way people booked travelling abroad, with readily available information about prices, transfers, times and choices they wouldn't have had at a travel agency. Barton then went on to create Zillow, a company that uses data from previous home listings to calculate the price of every house in the country. Empowering people with information and tools they didn't have before, giving them all the advantages that come with true insight and honesty.
His next breakthrough would be with Robert Hohman, with the creation of Glassdoor. Glassdoor is now the second largest job site, closely following indeed.com. Not only does Glassdoor host job applications, but there is an entirely reviewable profile attached to your brand, giving any ex/current employees, candidates who have been for interviews before and anyone who has had a tie to the company the anonymous platform to let people know what it is like working for your organisation.
The website is making every detail readily available to anyone who wants it; salary information, progression opportunities, interview breakdowns, management attitudes, review of leaders and a star rating, and not to mention, it's all untouchable by the business. Candidates have the power to make decisions about your company before they even send you their CV. Barton and Hohman completely turned the recruitment industry on its head; the disruption gave the power back to the candidate, letting them know their exact worth and possible future.
In a 2016 Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, it was identified that the majority of candidates read six reviews before applying for a role with a company, and 70% of people now look to reviews prior to making any career decisions at all. Meaning, your Glassdoor profile may be one of the most influential tools in the recruitment process for candidates considering a position with you, so are you loosing quality candidates because of your reviews?
So how can you move your organisation into a culture of transparency?
Here are my top tips:
- Understand that you need to be AWARE OF YOUR BRAND; aka how people see you, not just how you want them to see you
"Fifty-four percent of recruiters know their Glassdoor rating off the top of their heads"- do you?
Your brand image could be suffering because of certain elements of your business, is your recruitment process too long? Are candidate's disgruntled by the lack of feedback after an unsuccessful interview? Is your leadership team disconnected from the front-line teams? Glassdoor will give you the most honest and direct feedback about all of these elements... so listen up.
- Get it right from the very beginning- PROFILING AND RECRUITMENT
Being honest with candidates is so important, whether that is giving them feedback on how it went (successful or not), or being as specific and transparent as possible with the job profiling and the type of person you are looking to fill the role.
Start with the correct profiling; work with each role, highlight the exact competencies and traits you need to find in the candidate, along with personality matching, motivational preferences and the correct skills set. Having an honest job profile sets expectations for candidates, letting them know exactly what will be expected of them, giving you more quality candidates and less time wasted.
Next, use a range of psychometric assessments to identify the right candidates and filter out those who are not really suited for the role. You can get a really important amount of insight into how a candidate will fair in the role through personality and motivational psychometrics, and ability will let you know the skill set as well.
Now, on average a job vacancy can attract around 250 applications, so feedback back to each candidate can be difficult, but it is still so important. Psychometrics such as the Dimensions personality assessment will provide a candidate specific report output, saving you time and energy in producing feedback for each candidate, while others will provide you with the helpful data to summarise for feedback.
- Encourage feedback and honesty- REVIEWS AND 360 DEGREE FEEDBACK
360 degree feedback is the perfect way to gather insight from a number of areas on the leadership and senior management teams all the way through to the front line team, in an honest and anonymous way. This kind of tool really does help to highlight the areas of strength you have in your teams, but also can bring to light some issues others may not be comfortable bring up directly.
You can read more about the importance of honesty with our Client Director, Abigail Clayton's blog post 'Power to the People'
Speak to us today to see how your organisations culture and transparency could be improved, info@getfeedback.net or call us on 01491845536.
References and further reading
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/improving-workplace-culture-one-review-at-a-time
https://mattcharney.com/2018/05/10/glassdoor-an-ma-which-will-live-in-infamy/
https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/how-candidates-use-glassdoor/
