The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
Welcome to The Breakthrough Hiring Show! We are on a mission to help leaders make hiring a competitive advantage.
Join our host, James Mackey, and guests as they discuss various topics, with episodes ranging from high-level thought leadership to the tactical implementation of process and technology.
You will learn how to:
- Shift your team’s culture to a talent-first organization.
- Develop a step-by-step guide to hiring and empowering top talent.
- Leverage data, process, and technology to achieve hiring success.
Thank you to our sponsor, SecureVision, for making this show possible!
The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 127: Leadership, transparency, and the future of work with Christian Sutherland-Wong, CEO at Glassdoor
Join us for an engaging conversation with host James Mackey and Christian Sutherland-Wong, CEO at Glassdoor, as they explore career growth, workplace transparency, and the evolving world of workplace conversations.
Discover Glassdoor's mission to promote transparency in the workplace, leveling the playing field for job seekers and employees. Explore the pivotal role of leadership, transparency, and employee feedback in enhancing workplace experiences and performance.
Moreover, they discuss the future of work, weigh the pros and cons of remote work, and introduce you to new exciting community features on Glassdoor.
0:39 Christian Sutherland's background
2:24 LinkedIn and Glassdoor's impact on recruiting and job searching
7:49 The value of transparency and employee experience
14:10 Leadership and employee feedback
23:32 Future of work and Glassdoor's role
28:28 Glassdoor's new community features
Thank you to our sponsor, SecureVision, for making this show possible!
Our host James Mackey
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Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, james Mackey, very excited for today's episode. We are joined by Christian Sutherland Wong. Christian, thank you for joining us. How are you doing, doing?
Speaker 2:well, thanks for having me, james.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am pumped. Before we jump into the topics we have outlined, could you please share a little bit about yourself with everyone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to. I originally born in Australia and grew up there. I spent most of my young adult life there. I came to the States back in 2007, originally to do an MBA, and then where it's taken me from there is I was spent a little bit of time at LinkedIn and then, most recently, I spent the last eight years at Glassdoor. Helping to do that Glassdoor, and we're helping to transform Glassdoor into the leading platform for workplace conversations.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to learn more. So you mentioned starting a small little company called LinkedIn back in the day, right, and I'd love to learn a little bit more about what you were helping them build while you were there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I joined LinkedIn back in 2009.
Speaker 2:And it was a hand 300 people, I think, so relatively small for what LinkedIn's become today, before the IPO and it was just attracted to it because I saw it as one of these great examples of a what we used to call web 2.0 or social web companies.
Speaker 2:But I could see it was going to change how people communicated and also, I think, the business model around changing how recruiting works, and it was probably, I think, the biggest disruption to recruiting we've seen in decades and it was really cool to be part of it. So I was there for five years. I ran LinkedIn's premium subscription product and business, which was a key part of the way of how LinkedIn earned revenue and in allowing for members to upgrade to a premium membership so that could be job seekers, it could be recruiters or people in sales, and then, over time, we started building more deeper offerings for recruiters and for salespeople. But it all came out of premium subscriptions, and so I was there for five years and, yeah, I had a really fun ride and it's great to see how LinkedIn has just grown as a company, really transformed how all of us work, oh yeah, for sure, I pretty much built my entire RPO embedded recruiting business on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can think of like how would RPO work or how would, for so many recruiters, how their lives work without LinkedIn? There was a time to go back prior to 2003, before LinkedIn was around, where it was really different. You had to have these roller dex's and all these contacts you had. Your brand is your prized asset and now and LinkedIn just democratized that and so totally changed the game, but from that, I think, allowed recruiting to get even more better and bigger and even more strategic for companies in a bigger way, and I think it's really cool what LinkedIn is like, how they can change the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. I got my first client at SecureVision through LinkedIn. I was doing posting and whatnot and connecting with leaders in town, acquisition and a recruiting leader at Grubhub. I saw one of my posts and reached out to me and I was at the time literally it was just me and the company and again, we didn't have any customers and it wasn't what was really interesting about it was my first customer came from LinkedIn, not my personal network, like it wasn't like a close friend or anything like that is. I got an inbound lead from Grubhub, from LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:That's just wow. Yeah it's not just like the breadth of LinkedIn and also that people trust LinkedIn and people actually go to LinkedIn looking for these opportunities. You know that example from Grubhub you had of. I think that's kind of part of the power of the platform is that they've created a very safe space for people to have these kinds of business interactions.
Speaker 1:But that's really cool, yeah, I think so and I think like, too, it's they've done a pretty good job over the years dialing into a couple of different product offerings or I know it's more than a couple, but they really haven't straightened too far from their brand or their mission, like. I think that they've done a pretty good job like dialing into OK, this is the value we're providing, and what I think is really cool too, is, beyond being able to showcase, like your skill set and whatnot, it really is just the power of network and, quite honestly, the power of content. People that choose to post and build, brand and do these types of things and position themselves as experts. It creates a lot of value for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it really expands our ability to have, as you said, more than a roll of decks of just maybe a couple hundred people. You can really get exposure in your industry beyond anything that was available before. So it's definitely like a game changer, right, Like a massive shift in terms of how we go about identifying opportunities, building relationships, recruiting, hiring. It's really just changed everything drastically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and I think your example of Grubhub also kind of speaks to, I think, the evolution of the way LinkedIn has added value in our lives. And I think early on it was very heavily focused on kind of the recruiting conversations, but over time, beyond just recruiting, now it's also just building your business in general and making contacts in general. I think LinkedIn is the place a lot of us think about building our personal brand. So when we have something we want to post the world, usually it's professionally related or somehow tied to something professionally related. Linkedin is a great platform to do that and it's really cool to see how LinkedIn's evolved over the years and how it could be used. Linkedin, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Think about even this episode, right, like I'm going to be promoting this episode essentially to my LinkedIn network, my, I think, 34,000 followers, many of which are like tech executives, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so just the access to value that we can push out to the world. Like, how would I have done that? Newsletters right, there's certain things that you could do. I really just wasn't accessible before. So I think what's really cool about your career too, it's like you started at LinkedIn, which was this massive game changer, and then you went to Glassdoor, which also really fundamentally changed the game in terms of how people think about evaluating potential employment opportunities, and it's become a big part. I don't really know anybody who wouldn't leverage Glassdoor when they're considering working at a new company. Just, I don't really know a whole lot of people who wouldn't leverage LinkedIn. One of my questions I'm really curious to learn from you about is fundamentally just reviewing how Glassdoor changed the game initially when it was founded, and let's just start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I joined Glassdoor in 2015 and that was about seven years off. The Glassdoor was founded. But I think the early insight of the founders of Glassdoor Robert Homan, who was CEO of Glassdoor is he tells it is this realize that when you go out to get a job, the whole transaction is very lopsided. The company knows everything about you. They've got your resume, they've got your LinkedIn profile, they offer references, they quiz you on a whole bunch of stuff, and yet you from the outside have very little access to really know what's going on in the company.
Speaker 2:Is it a great company to work for? Is the salary they're offering me a fair compensation for my role, or is it less or more than what other people who are similar to me earn? And so that was the idea of Glassdoor. We can even the playing field here. We're going to drive more transparency in the workplace, and by doing that, I'll allow people to ultimately find a job and company that they'll love, one where they really gel with the company and one where they get paid fairly and the belief is this is not just going to be great for job seekers and employees, but ultimately great for companies as well, because, in the day, companies want to connect with people who are going to be a great fit for them.
Speaker 2:So if you can create a platform that drives this transparency earlier in the process, it'd be really a bit of a game changer, and so that's what attracted me to join back in 2015, which I want to be part of, this movement. In the same way, I've seen LinkedIn grow and become pre-transformational for the world of work and what recruiting. That's all the same potential for Glassdoor, and I think now, eight years beyond that, I think it's certainly true that we're things have played out that way, something that we at Glass are really proud of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. I think from a candidate perspective it makes a job-secret perspective. It makes a whole lot of sense. I think sometimes executives at companies may not understand the full value of investing in Glassdoor and investing in taking feedback from Glassdoor to make their organization better. The reality is, I feel like the best category-leading organizations understand that transparency needs to be a two-way street.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And so that's, I think, a mindset shift, that I think more companies are getting it now than even maybe five years ago. I've seen a big shift. As you said, right Companies. They want your employment history, performance references, past 10 years. And then, at the same day, it asks hey, what's your runway? Are you profitable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's the I like to work here. Yeah, dude, is an intense culture. People work really long hours, people are good to each other, what's the leadership like? And so many questions that people have. Yeah, totally, and to your point around, I think there has been this shift in the mindset of leadership. Over time, they've thought embrace transparency and really embrace Glassdoor, and I'd say rewind when I began.
Speaker 2:I think there are a lot of companies who are very tentative with their relationship with Glassdoor and fast forward to today where the best companies they all have a Glassdoor strategy.
Speaker 2:They all actively want to engage with us. They can see the win now. And the other part of it I think we've also shown and this is a lot of our academic research is that we find we have data that shows that the companies that perform the best when it comes to their overall Glassdoor rating as a reflection of their employee experience, they're the companies that outperform other companies when it comes to stock market performance and shareholder performance. And so there's this great narrative now that's in the data shows that if you create a great working experience, that will lead to you looking after your shareholders and it's logical you create a great workplace. You attract the best employees who want to come work for you. They stay with you longer, they're more productive and so, as a result, your company performs better. And I think that's where I think it's really dawned on leaders and employers over time that there's a real win if we embrace transparency and try and create great workplaces for people.
Speaker 1:I think that we also need to realize that the idea of experience and performance are not two separate conversations. Employee experience and performance are not two separate conversations. Candidate experience and performance aren't, because when you get experiences for people on the candidate side which I know, there's also options to leave reviews for the quality of the interview process, even if before people are employees. That's that stuff's incredibly important because if you're able to provide great experiences to candidates, you're going to get higher, more relevant talent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Down funnel and you're going to convert them into top talent, and I think that's just incredibly important. I think that sometimes executives don't even understand a blind spot there. For instance, like if experience isn't great, you might have some really talented folks drop out of your interview process and maybe you look down funnel and you look at who's, you're in your final round and you have one really great person.
Speaker 1:Maybe you could have had three and you're not going to really know that without having some sort of like feedback loop and then also just creating great experiences to get the best people on your team. And you're right Like great, for instance, like the idea of an employee experience right, if you create a great onboarding experience, it's really easy to look at sales, right? If you create great onboarding experience for salespeople, it also decreases their ramp time so that they can be productive faster. You're creating a better experience for the employee.
Speaker 1:but you're also potentially creating more revenue and growth for the organization. So again, to me it's experiences and outcomes. It's the same conversation when you want better outcomes to perform and start with experience.
Speaker 2:Right and I also like that you point on the user word relevance of it is about fit as well and it's not like there's a single way in which you create a great workplace.
Speaker 2:Your company is going to have a different strategy to other companies and you might have a different employee engagement strategy to other companies. And if you look on our platform, we have all different types of companies who have great glass door ratings. Some who are like really intense in, have intense workplaces For example, bain and company, the management and selling company where really renowned for really long hours and intense work schedules for the employees at the travel at the time as well. They're often they've actually been number one on our list of best places to work more than any other company, and what they've done is they've been able to attract the types of people who want to actually work those hours, who want to have the Bain experience.
Speaker 2:And I think lots of other companies sometimes get dismissed for being too intense or having a certain way in which they do business, but it's, I think, better for employees to have eyes wide open when they're going in and deciding to join that company. That's the employee experience they want to have. And there might be other companies that have fantastic work life balance and there are some employees who flock to those companies as well, and they can do great on Glassdoor when it comes to their readings as well but I think that idea of fit and relevance is what is most important, and it just comes back to transparency. If you're upfront on the type of your company you are, you will attract the right people for you, and you'll also have to make sure that the people who aren't a great fit don't apply or don't come through and get shocked on day one when they realize this is not the company they signed up for.
Speaker 1:And I also think it's important to share the challenges that your organization is having.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because every company is perfect and it's okay to have significant challenges. Every company does. They're going to have real problems and, roddy, do you want people on your team that are passionate about solving for those problems? And if you don't share those problems with folks, not only during the interview process, but through other avenues and channels of transparency, for instance, like Glassdoor like you're not necessarily going to get the people that, first of all, you don't want somebody to be blindsided by a challenge, but even the layer beyond that is that you want people that are excited about.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is a big challenge that the company is working through right now. I think I can be a value add in helping to solve for that, and I feel like that's sometimes a missed opportunity. We're always a lot of times when we're pitching or selling a company in terms of, hey, come, work here. It's, of course, we're focusing on all the cool things that we're doing, but it's okay to also dial into hey, here's the things that we're. It's a current challenge Like here's our strategy to make it better, but we're looking for great people that can help us make it to the next level, okay.
Speaker 2:I think being more open about your challenges is very much tied to your leadership maturity.
Speaker 2:I think early on as a leader, you feel like you need to control all the information, you need to control the message, because it's really scary to think, oh, if I'm open about this stuff, people will know that we're not doing well over here or this is really challenging.
Speaker 2:But then I think more mature leaders realize is that if you actually embrace being more transparent, sharing these issues I think Brene Brown talks about vulnerability a lot. I think it's a very similar kind of message of leaders who can act with vulnerability, who can share this, end up connecting better with candidates or with their employees, and also you have this knock and effect of them. Your employees will take on the challenge with you and they'll partner with you on solving these challenges. And that's what I see in the best leaders is they really embrace being open, being transparent, so that they can pass information more freely, so that everybody knows where everything stands and that we can all go and tackle the most important challenge together rather than being just spoon fed but the little bits of information that leadership wants you to know, which I think is a very old school way of trying to run a company.
Speaker 1:All right? I think so. As a business owner, I don't get terribly upset if I get a negative glass door review. I don't get defensive about it. It's okay to get some negative feedback too, and in fact. I think when people are looking at glass door, they want a realistic perspective. They're not just looking for it.
Speaker 1:They want to say, okay, but what about an experience that didn't go great? How come? And then what's the response of the company to that individual? And I think the response is to a review which isn't great. We'll tell you a lot about the leadership style, too, and I think you want to work for a company, too that says you know what, I'm sorry you had this experience. And this is the context of where the company was at, what we think might have happened, and it's a situation in which the company can make an improvement, to basically say, hey, this is what we've learned from this and we're talking with employees and this is what we're implementing as a result of that, and we really appreciate the feedback. Or, either way, regardless of how you need to handle the message, I think in response, there's opportunities there to have a genuine conversation, and I don't think anybody expects a company or a leader to be perfect.
Speaker 1:But I think that they're also looking at, like how are you going to respond, which the reality is like. Every company is going to have a challenge or isn't going to be able to create, quite honestly, great experience 100% of the time. That's never happened. It never will happen.
Speaker 1:You can be a great company to work for, but there are going to be times in which there's challenges and again, like I think how you respond to that is ultimately more important, and it's also showing that you're listening to employees and that you're consistently working on improving. I had a customer back in 2018, it's a category leading SaaS company that ended up IPOing.
Speaker 1:They hired in some external leaders and just wasn't the right fit At least that's the message I heard from the leaders that were there after this, and it messed with the culture and they went through a hiring sprint and then they ended up having to let go of fair amount of people because some of the wrong, the irrelevant people or the people that weren't the right fit, were brought into the organization and their glass door got hammered by people criticizing the leadership and this, that and the other.
Speaker 1:And I'll be honest, like from a recruiting standpoint at first, like it really did it hurt, but what we ended up doing is the leaders responded and then, on the interview process, they also had a very clear roadmap of hey, this is what we're doing about it and this is how we are in a different place today and how we're going to continue to be able to improve. And, quite honestly, I think it took three from three months to 12 months like we saw drastically consistent improvements in terms of how employees interacted with that and I think in the long run, it actually helped create a better company because it showed it again. Okay, what is leadership now doing about that?
Speaker 2:I love hearing stories like that, where it's a much more evolved attitude to getting feedback, recognizing that it's not about trying to manipulate a Glassdoor rating or score. It's actually about going and solving the employee issues and then the employees start to engage more and then you should just see that your Glassdoor score will follow and I think that's the ideal cases as leads like you and others in companies who have that more evolved perspective. On the flip side, I have a lot of empathy. I've myself received hard Glassdoor reviews and it stings. It can be personal and I think that's in the moment.
Speaker 2:It can feel personal, but I think what I'm better at now than say when I first took over a CEO of Glassdoor was I can see the forest from the trees and say and then look at this as a gift, like all feedback, and in something where you look to try and improve from it and create a better employee experience, knowing that's actually going to be great for the business as well. That's generally the perspective I try and have and I think that you have as well, but I have a lot of empathy. That takes time to get there and at times it can be hard to receive constructive feedback.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, I'll be honest, there's been a few times where it can be a little challenging to. It hurts, yeah, but I think it's, and sometimes I don't know. Of course, there's been a couple of times where I don't necessarily agree, but I think still, what I end up trying to do is go through the motion of saying, okay, this isn't my perspective or worldview, but let me really try, like in order, if even let's say I'm like it's not ever so black and white as saying this is right, this is wrong. But I do believe in the thought process of okay, in order to prove myself, let me try to prove myself wrong first so I can actually confident how I'm going about solving an issue. So I'll go through what's, what are all the reasons this individual might be right.
Speaker 1:Like really dive into it and maybe somebody's hurt on the other side of it, maybe they're hurt. It's like, maybe, okay, the feedback is unactionable for a reason that maybe, from your perspective as a leader, you understand. But okay, how did what happened lead to that kind of more so emotional response Like what, what experiences could we have done to? Maybe it was a communication thing? Maybe, if we're saying to ourselves that's not what happened or that's not what we were doing, then maybe there's a breakdown in communication somewhere along the line where employees don't feel like they're necessarily in the loop or they have a different idea of how the company's being run yes.
Speaker 1:And that's happened to me. I'll be honest, that's happened to me a couple of times where I've received the feedback of maybe a strategy isn't being executed properly or why are we investing our energy here versus here? And in my head I'm like I know this. I know why we are and I feel somewhat confident in that because we've given it a lot of thought. I've talked to a lot of advisors, we've talked to customers and then the feedback. The next layer of it is how well did I communicate that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's happened to me more recently where I'm like okay, so maybe what I learned from this isn't necessarily I can't make the adjustment that's in the review. However, the adjustment that's like the layer deeper is we need to figure out how we're going to communicate, moving forward, to make sure that we're completely aligned with our team and everybody knows why we do the things we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a super thoughtful way of approaching it and it could be communication or could just and then the other part of it. Is it just one review? Is it just one person saying this, or is there a chorus of voices saying this? And that's what. Also, I think, other tools as well.
Speaker 2:Glassdoor is one resource you can do to get feedback on how your employees feel right now, and there are other ways you can get feedback as well. You can obviously talk to employees. You can do internals pulse surveys of employees, but I think having an attitude of where you embrace that, where you want to learn from that and, as you said, it's not necessarily means that employees don't like this. Therefore, you change strategy, just trying to understand where is the point of view coming from that people aren't on board. Is it a communication issue? Are there other things that you just unintended consequences of decisions you've been making that you need to bring to light? Or is it just, frankly, look, there's going to be some pain with this decision, and you stand up and you say, okay, that's the thing we need to lead through right now, but irrespective, I think that's the role of leaders is to take on feedback and to actively seek it out, and I think Glassor is an incredible leadership tool for people if they take that attitude to embrace the content we have on our platform.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great conclusion to the first segment. I love that part of the conversation. That's really cool. I want to transition into a conversation about the future of recruitment, future of employment, hiring, employee experience and maybe start high level about your thoughts on how the future of work, which BuzzyTurbs we can get a little deeper in it.
Speaker 1:What does that look like over the next several years? Then I would love to hear from you and how Glassdoor is going to continue to be that incredible resource for candidates, employers. What product roadmap do you have? What focus does the company have, I guess, starting with the high level? What's the future of work going to look like? What is Glassdoor doing to empower folks to make the most out of their careers and to grow their companies and these types of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, love the question. It's one we think about a lot. Frankly, it's been through thinking about this question that we've started to evolve our strategy for Glassdoor and where we want to take the platform. I rewind back to COVID times in 2020, and we're thinking a lot about Glassdoor's direction. We'd seen this seismic shift in how people would work. It was forced upon us that all of us had to start working from home and we couldn't go into the office, but then since then, in a post-COVID world, it's really fundamentally changed how people work. I think it's still shifting and I think it may be the pendulum swinging a little bit back. You see some companies asking people to return to office, but I think we can all confidently say that the world of work in the future is going to be very different to 2019 and before. We're not going to go back to 2019.
Speaker 2:There are big swaths of the job market that have actively embraced remote work, big swaths that have actively embraced some hybrid culture. Even the ones who are largely returning to an in-office culture. I think even they, just by virtue of their talent, competitors offering more flexibility will be offering more flexibility. There is just a higher degree of flexibility in the future of work than we've ever seen before. I think that comes with a ton of advantages for both companies and for people. I think for companies, it opens up new talent pools they can be tapping into. If they start even thinking about embracing more remote sorry, asynchronous type work arrangements, I think that can also lead to unlocking different forms of productivity.
Speaker 2:I think, while there's a lot of things that we do really well synchronously, I think for many companies overdone, and I see that this is changing as well but on the con side, I'd say that from the employee experience, despite all the flexibility you get, what we've seen and we see this on our platform in Love Store Reviews is that people feel more disconnected from their workplaces and from their colleagues than ever before. We've seen people talk much more about these concepts of burnout at higher rates in workplace reviews or feeling lonely or feeling isolated, and these terms come up in more reviews than we've ever seen before. It makes sense. I think back to my own experience 2019, before I was in the office every single day, having the banter, having that energy that you get from being around other people. It's very different to today where Glassdoor is now a largely remote based workplace and I don't get that energy and I even feel a little bit disconnected. So I think that's a major change in the, a change we've seen and will be a big part of the future of work as well.
Speaker 2:Another major change we've seen in the last few years is and I think it's both related to this newer generation of workers who want to be more, bring their whole selves to work and want to be able to talk about a set of a whole set of topics related to their work and life in the workplace, more so than ever before.
Speaker 2:Topics we would have typically thought of as taboo, topics related to politics or all these other social issues, have now become something that people are looking to talk at work, and people are also expecting their leaders to talk about at work or even have a stand on.
Speaker 2:We've seen research that shows that, and people feel more disconnected from traditional sources of leadership like governments, leadership in governments or even leadership in religions, and so therefore, you know they turn their attention to their workplace leaders to fill that void and therefore have a stand on many social issues, and so I think that's a trend that is only increasing, not decreasing, and so I think, as a result of that the workplace and what a company stands for is much more to the narrow concept of its business, but also its values and now more front and center in how it attracts talent and how it conveys itself to the world.
Speaker 2:And so these are probably some of the biggest trends that we've seen at Glassdoor, and I can talk a little bit later around some of how it's that. Therefore, that's evolved how we think about our product. But, yeah, I think we're frankly seeing the biggest shift in the workplace experience in these last few years than I've ever experienced in the many decades that I've worked, and I think it's true in multiple generations, probably going back to the time of probably around World War II, when we saw disruptions of this nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting and some of these are pretty big problems to solve for when, in terms of people not feeling like they're able to engage with their team quite as much and how that is shifting in company culture. I think a lot of people, despite maybe feeling like it's harder to engage and feeling a little disconnected, people also like multiple things can exist at once, People can be really happy with the flexibility getting back the commute time, which is insane when you do the math on how many hours you get back.
Speaker 1:And two parents thinking about if your kids at daycare or at school. You have a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the evening and that's it, and if two of those hours are possibly more commuting, it's a lot of time, but that could be with your family or doing something healthy for yourself or these types of things. So I think most people would agree that's great that we're getting as a society. Essentially, we're getting a lot of time back. But specifically getting into Glassdoor, I know you have more of a new community feature that you're rolling out, and is that correlated? Is that to essentially help solve for this issue and, if so, how are you doing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think it's those kind of two of those issues that I raised one around the feeling of disconnectedness in the workplace and the other around wanting to have real conversations about a broad range of topics. And so what we've embraced is bringing more conversational content into the platform so that people can view Glassdoor as a community for workplace conversations, so not just a place you go post reviews or share your salary, but a place where you can go and connect with people and have chat back and forth. That could be. There's different types of communities. That kind of started to evolve in this concept.
Speaker 2:One of the most important communities is the employees you work with, so your colleagues.
Speaker 2:So we've created these what we call company bowls, which are a private space just for verified employees of your company, where you can converse with one another, and similar to where an anonymity has been a big part of Glassdoor from the beginning.
Speaker 2:We see anonymity being a really important part so people can have real conversation without fear of being reprimanded by leadership, so they can really speak truth to power in that sense. And so we found that these company bowls an incredibly vibrant set of communities once they get going. But we also want to have communities not just within your company but across industry as well, or interest areas, and if you work in tech, there's a tech company bowl. If you're working recruiting, there's and their HR bowls, and then there's also ones for interest areas, like women and our affiliate groups, affinity groups like women in tech or real estate, investing and things of that nature, and we see that in all these different types of communities it's just a really vibrant conversation, I think, filling this void for the fact that we're not having these types of conversations in the workplace in a physical sense anymore, but we still want to be having these conversations with the HR team?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and I think too that employees probably are going to like the idea that it's a glass door is a totally separate company that's unaffiliated with the HR people team or whoever's read through the feedback, because there's employee surveys that are anonymous and whatnot right, and there's different tools out there.
Speaker 1:But I think the idea of having glass doors really trusted as an external resource that's completely affiliated, where people are already used to sharing different types of feedback right Particularly challenges that they're going through. So I think people would like the idea of it being through glass door versus a survey that's sent out by their employer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so too. I think it's nice that this is not a tool that your employer has told you to go use, like their internal survey tools. But frankly, as a leader, I can tell you that I assume most leaders would operate this way. As well as that, when you send out an internal survey, you're not going to break anonymity and break users to employee's trust. But I think for employees, they may not always have that trust and so they do like the idea of a really third party platform that they've engaged with. It's not something their employer told them to use. They can come to, and then there's a high degree of anonymity within our community.
Speaker 2:We actually create the option for people to choose a level of identity. So you can be purely anonymous, or maybe you want to post as working from your company or your particular role, or, if you choose, you can post into the community with your identity. So I often post as Christian Southerland Wong, particularly when I'm talking within our own glass door employee bowl is that I want people to have full transparency. That's my voice they're hearing. But it really depends, and I think anonymity for in some cases it can be great for providing safety, but also I think anonymity is a great in terms of levels of playing field. It makes every voice matter and often when you don't have a platform like that and you have a leader come in, their voice carries more weight. It's really nice. It doesn't matter if you're the top of the leadership team or you're just a frontline employee. Everybody can have the same voice in this community and I think that's one of the most powerful aspects of giving people control over how they choose to identify themselves when they post.
Speaker 1:And so are most of the posts done around asking questions or what are some of the more specific use cases, like how are people using it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. Yeah, a lot of it is asking questions, people looking for support. So one of the biggest use cases and not surprisingly because we're last door is people who are researching companies and jobs and they're looking for information about a career switch. So they're trying to get some information from people. But there's also it goes beyond just I'd say, strictly the jobs transaction.
Speaker 2:People talk more broadly about their careers and even more into other stuff that you talk about at work. If you remember back in the days when the office we would talk about sport on the weekend or that the football game or things like that, and so there's that type of banter also comes onto the platform and people talking about a whole set of topics. And then there's the more lighthearted stuff, where it's not necessarily a question but more of a meme or a funny post that people are just sharing to create a bit of levity as well. So it's a range of things, but I think a lot of it is utility, where people are trying to get some advice for their career, get some advice from, maybe, a job switch, and they're leveraging the power of the community to help them get informed.
Speaker 1:For people that are part of the same employer that are leveraging one of these a bowl. Are there several channels per se? I don't know if there's some people are asking questions about career progression or possibly transitioning into a different department. Is that part of the same conversation thread or is it as somebody who's talking about something more lighthearted? Or is it conversations segmented out? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's evolving, but I'd say that first insight is that it actually mixes really well to have the lighthearted stuff mixed in there with the more utility stuff on hey, have a question about my career or have a point of view on this in response to what's to some recent leadership news or the other.
Speaker 2:In addition to having the lighthearted stuff, having it all mixed together I think works really well. We are thinking of getting really big companies on the platform. In the 10,000, 100,000-person employee company, we do start to see the needs to create these channels on. Maybe this is more relevant to a particular part of the team, a particular location or a particular function, and we've experimented Even at Glassdoor. We have different functions who've created their own sub-channel or sub-company bowl for just their department and they converse that way. But we're still evolving exactly how it all fits together, because I even find that sometimes some of the stuff that you find in, say, what the product managers are talking about, be great for the broader companies to hear and vice versa, but something we're still figuring out. But I think what's most powerful is that people want to have these conversations with their colleagues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I think it's naturally going to evolve based on where we're seeing the most engagement, right Like, how are people actually using and engaging the most? And then it'll be cool to see how that evolves over the next several years.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Cool. So, anyways, look, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. We're coming up on time and I know you've shared a ton of really valuable insight and some interesting stories too, on the evolution of Glassdoor and LinkedIn, so I know everybody tuning in is going to get a lot of value from this Christian. I just want to say thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:James.
Speaker 1:Of course, and for everybody else tuning in, make sure to continue to tune in. Over the next few weeks. We have a lot of really exciting episodes coming up. We have Dan Chait, co-founder and CEO of Greenhouse, coming back on, steve Bartell, co-founder, ceo of Gem, coming on, and then we also have C-levels coming on from GoPro DocuSign, and we also have Amit, who's a good friend of mine, who's the CEO of Tenable, which is a publicly traded cybersecurity company you may have heard of. So we're going to continue to bring on some amazing folks that value to you. Thank you for being part of our community and we'll talk to you next time. Take care.
