Ranting and raving is in our nature. Considering that many workers must cope with an 8-hour workday rife with feckless motions, it seems appropriate to have a forum where employees can vent their frustrations about their former or current job and maybe indulge in a cat fight or two.
Lately it seems these sites are a dime a dozen. Techcrunch just reviewed a new one called Telonu (get it - tell on you?), and at Cheezhead we’ve posted a few notes about Glassdoor. Jobvent has been blogged about quite extensively around the recruiting community and can be a great place to research employee perks, culture, loyalty, and brand management.
So what else can we glean from these sites? For one thing, Glassdoor offers valuable salary data that companies can use as benchmarking tools. If you want to know what an engineer at Google makes, a few clicks can steer you in the right direction.
Visitors to these sites can also learn about new products, startups, and projects. Some employees, including this enterprising guy from Microsoft, wrote about some new Windows Live Essentials updates that his team refreshed today and asked for feedback on Telonu.
Telonu includes a “layoff talk” tab on their employee interface that lets users post rumors about possible comings and goings. Here a Google employee speculates that 300 more people are set to be axed in addition to the 3000 contract workers that were cut recently. So these sites can be great way for recruiters to begin building a pipeline of candidates knowing firsthand when and where layoffs are said to occur.
Criticat goes one step further from the typical rant and allows users to ‘advise’ their employers on how to better-manage their companies. Corporations on the receiving end of the advice could use this to reevaluate their performance assessment and layoff policies.
Although none of these sites have emerged as a true leader of the pack, most of them are a valuable source of information that can be mined by both the job seeker and the employer. Want to know why Apple employees are loyal to Steve Jobs? Go to Glassdoor. Want to talk stocks, acquisitions, or layoffs? Check out Telonu. Want to know why people really, really despise working for Progressive? Go to Jobvent. These sites have proven to be more than just a major b*tchfest.
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