Glassdoor Reviews – Miscreant Managers Mangling the Message

*We all know that internet is teeming with liars. Conspiracy theorists and quasi-governmental “officials” claiming all kinds of things that never happened, and denying things that actually happened, in order to create doubt or encourage beliefs that will help them advance their atrocious agendas. As long as the liars stay within certain parameters, their impact is minimized and their fraudulence doesn’t affect many people. But then, not to affect many people would not serve the motives of the lying internet scoundrels.

When looking for a job, there is a website called Glassdoor.com where employees offer up the “inside scoop” on what it is like to work for that particular company. If you’re looking for a job, you can usually go to Glassdoor.com and find a review of the company. Many times the reviews are quite dreadful, and when I read enough poor reviews, I will decline sending them my resume.

By the way, for reasons I will explain in another article, please refrain from sending your resume to companies that refuse disclose their name. Any company refusing to identify themself is very likely not a company where you would like to work. I really like the creative job descriptions that some of these long-hour, low-pay, commission-only, “marketing” firms offer. I especially like the slapdash, slightly out of focus photos of their “marketing team” dressed in ill-fitting, poorly matched clothes standing in a bare office, looking like they just staggered in the door.

We all know that internet is teeming with liars.

If you see job descriptions such as “brand ambassador” or “hands-on marketing” be ready to stand around at a retail establishment hawking something that the customers did not come there to buy, or to walk door-to-door pounding the pavement as well as front doors trying to sell some home service. These “marketing” firms always have immediate openings because they don’t keep anyone much more than a few months.

Upon reading the Glassdoor.com evaluations, you get an idea of what the job that they are offering really entails, the working conditions, the pay, and attitudes of the managers. Companies like Theranos, one of latest spectacular failures in the business world, goaded Glassdoor.com into taking down all of the nasty comments that former employees had made, and had the Human Resource department write glowing reviews of working there. Any Human Resource manager posting false reviews on Glassdoor.com should be dealt with severely, but like all of the two-faced treacherous trolls on the internet, nothing is likely to happen.Glassdoor.com is aware of companies paying or encouraging employees to post deceptive reviews of their firm, especially when a company has dozens of raunchy reviews and suddenly Glassdoor.com receives a throng of beaming assessments.

Whenever Glassdoor.com sees a significant change in the reviews within a short period of time, they investigate whether someone is cooking the books, offering unrealistically convivial reviews in order to lure applicants into their oubliette of a workplace. When everyone knows (or everyone who went to Glassdoor.com knows) that working there is a nightmare, the recruiters have to do something.

The seemingly obvious thing to do when disparaged on Glassdoor.com would be to rearrange the workplace, reeducate or dispose of the bad managers, make the workplace friendlier to employees and make their jobs something more than just hours of misery for a meager paycheck. But then, all of the aforementioned efforts to improve the workplace would probably be harder than to just get on your computer and start posting glowing, glad-handing reviews of working for the company, even if what you are posting is nothing but lies and hyperbole.