How To Compare LinkedIn Company Pages to Glassdoor Profiles

Companies recognize the power of employment branding when it comes to telling their story, influencing job seekers, and winning the war on talent. To stay relevant, employers today require a strong online presence across multiple channels to promote their brand and advertise their jobs to interested candidates researching them.  Here's a side-by-side comparison of the employment branding products offered by Glassdoor and LinkedIn. I'll be evaluating each in terms of candidate influence, branding, job advertising, and cost, and summarizing my findings below. 1.       Track candidate influence in terms of pageview traffic Because LinkedIn has such a significant online presence as the world's largest professional network, the assumption is that a Company Page on their site would generate tons of traffic in the form of pageviews from candidates researching them.   Turns out, job seekers may be going to LinkedIn to network, but they're not going there to research employers - they're turning to Glassdoor. How do we know? Well, after surveying hundreds of employers big and small, across multiple industries, we found that companies were seeing 3 times more traffic on their Glassdoor profile as they did with their LinkedIn Company Page.  For employers with hourly employees, this number can be as high as 20-30x. Job seekers visit Glassdoor because they want to make smart careers moves. They want to know what it's like to work at particular companies, what they can earn for the work they do and what it's like to interview at the company - Glassdoor gives them all of this plus access to more than 5 million job listings in the US. Is your company seeing 3x more traffic on Glassdoor vs LinkedIn?  How to compare traffic between your Glassdoor profile and your LinkedIn company page. 2.       Identify where offers the most branding opportunities On Glassdoor, employer branding is shown throughout all profile pages - employer overview, salaries, company reviews, interviews reviews, and jobs tabs.  On LinkedIn, employer branding can only be found on one page - the Careers tab. When it comes to content, Glassdoor includes a rich text editor for employers to create a custom layout, embed videos and photos, and share their story in five different sections within the Why Work For Us tab. LinkedIn offers only a plain text editor and limits the employer brand messaging to two sections. In other words, Glassdoor makes it really easy to post more of an employer's story on the site and share it with the community.  Glassdoor also integrates directly with social media channels, showcasing Twitter feeds, Facebook status updates, and YouTube videos directly on the Glassdoor profile page for a dynamic candidate experience, whereas LinkedIn only offers text links to those pages. On Glassdoor, when an employer pays to enhance their profile, they 'own' the real estate¹ so all competitor advertising - from display ads to job postings - no longer show up on their page.  LinkedIn forces employers to purchase their more costly Gold or Platinum profiles to block talent competitors from branding and advertising on their company page.  The least-expensive Silver profiles LinkedIn offers feature prominent competitor ads and job listings on the home, services, and insights tabs. 3.       Evaluate the quality of job advertising In the end, employment branding is a means to influence candidates researching a company with the goal of having them apply to an open position.  With a Glassdoor Enhanced Employer Profiles, jobs are prominently advertised on all pages, targeted and prioritized based on the behavioral activity and background of each specific user.  On LinkedIn, jobs are shown on the Careers page only, and not targeted based on the user profile. Here's the real kicker in comparing the quality of job advertising on a Glassdoor profile compared to LinkedIn Company Pages:  The only jobs that will show up on a LinkedIn Company Page are the jobs currently being advertised on LinkedIn!  That means if you're a large Fortune 500 company with hundreds or even thousands of open positions, you'd have to pay to post all of those jobs in order for them to show up in front of the job seekers actively researching their company (LinkedIn charges $395 to post 1 job for 30 days).  On Glassdoor, when an employer pays to enhance their profile, ALL jobs get advertised through an automatic feed from their applicant tracking system and featured on each page within the profile. 4.       Determine cost differences between profiles and pages Glassdoor offers monthly contracts to employers looking to promote their brand and advertise their jobs on Glassdoor, starting at $600/month. A popular introductory package for small and medium-sized employers is Glassdoor Essentials, which includes 12 months of an enhanced profile and unlimited job advertising throughout Glassdoor for all jobs for a flat rate of $999/month. For employers with more than 50 open positions, Glassdoor can customize a branding and recruitment package to meet their unique needs. Based on information gathered from online sources and LinkedIn's own community forum, LinkedIn only offers annual contracts for Company Pages, starting at $10,000/year for Silver packages, and up to $70,000/year for Gold and Platinum.   Some clients didn't know what they paid for their LinkedIn Company Page and others shared that their Company Page was bundled into a package so they were unsure of its value. Have you compared employer profiles offered by Glassdoor and LinkedIn? Please share your feedback below!   ¹ Note all user-generated content on Glassdoor (e.g. reviews, salary reports, interview reviews and office photos) are not owned or edited in any way by the employer.