What is The Informed Candidate? - Glassdoor for Employers
the informed candidate

What is The Informed Candidate?

Definition: The Informed Candidate is a person who is well-researched and engaged with your company, which means he or she will turn out to be the right fit and - once hired - get onboarded faster, exhibit greater productivity and stay at a job longer. Informed Candidates are also guaranteed to improve your bottom line by saving you time and money.

Every employer in the world wants to hire great people who stay productive and engaged. And every person wants to find a job they love. Unfortunately, great employees and a perfect job are difficult to find. Employers often have to sift through hundreds, if not thousands of applications searching for the perfect match. Job seekers become disappointed when they find out the company culture promoted on the company website is not actually a reality.

The aspirations of making a great hire and finding a perfect job are two sides of the same end-goal - and they become a reality for both employees and employers with Glassdoor. Here's why.

94% of today's UK job seekers want to be thorough and informed about all aspects of a company before accepting an offer (1). As one of the largest and fastest growing global job sites offering millions of employee reviews, company ratings, salary estimates and more, Glassdoor is where they go today. The 41M job seekers worldwide doing their research on Glassdoor every month are the Informed Candidates employers want - the ones who are well-researched, engaged and turn out to be the right fit.

These are the candidates you want. They're your slam-dunks, your big wins, the shining beacons of talent who will make you look great - and make your company's success skyrocket.

Recruiting these Informed Candidates on Glassdoor saves employers valuable time throughout the hiring process, reducing the number of unqualified resumes to sift through and speeding up time to fill. Once they're hired, they get onboarded faster, exhibit greater productivity, contribute to positive company culture, influence other great hires to come on board - and increase employee retention.

Where do you find Informed Candidates? Only on Glassdoor.

More Qualified Applicants

Reducing the number of unqualified CVs to sift through

Glassdoor has an Easier Hiring Process

The right candidates move through the funnel the fastest

Better Hires Who Stay Longer

No buyer's remorse due to wrong expectations

But why does Glassdoor work?

It's because the insights found on Glassdoor serve both candidates and employers by helping to demystify everything from company ratings and salaries to employee reviews, benefits and interview reviews.

how glassdoor works

Glassdoor is at Every Stage of the Job Search

At the very top of the funnel - right when they're beginning their job search - candidates are becoming aware of open positions with targeted job posts on Glassdoor. At this stage, we ask for a little information, which helps us target the right job for them - job openings that match their skills and locale. When they move into the consideration phase, Glassdoor serves up reviews and ratings. Upon securing an interview, Glassdoor offers insight into the interview process with reviews from prior candidates. At the offer stage, candidates have visibility into benefits and salary information. And at the time of hire? People who have come through Glassdoor are 2X more likely to be hired because they're the right fit (2).

Glassdoor Saves Time

Any idea what the #1 reason why people come to the Glassdoor site is? Nope, it's not for company reviews; it's to search for jobs (3). In fact, nearly 8 out of 10 people in the UK on Glassdoor are actively looking for jobs or open to new opportunities (4). With an audience of 41-million Informed Candidates worldwide, that means fewer unqualified candidates, more engaged candidates - and twice the likelihood of making a hire (5).

the ideal candidate

On Glassdoor, these Informed Candidates see:

Job Advertising

Attract Engaged Job Seekers

Display Advertising

Target Ideal Candidates

Enhanced Profile

Tell Your Company Story

Glassdoor has Informed Candidates of all kinds.

In every business sector, from tech and finance to healthcare, retail and manufacturing, companies of all sizes are turning to Glassdoor to find and hire Informed Candidates.

glassdoor informed candidate

Here are just a few companies who are amping up their hiring game with the help of Glassdoor.

revlocal logo

RevLocal is a digital marketing agency that provides local search marketing solutions for small businesses. Aaron Boggs, president of RevLocal, sees Glassdoor as "an amazing branding tool that helps us set proper expectations for roles and hire the right people. Glassdoor caused us to rethink our presence and branding across social media by reminding us to place ourselves in our candidates' shoes and posting content that matters to them." With Glassdoor, RevLocal was able to triple candidate awareness (6). They were also able to increase application clicks fifteen-fold and increase impressions for jobs by a factor of 30 - in just one year of partnering with Glassdoor (7).

forrester logo - What is The Informed Candidate?

Forrester is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world, where smart, motivated, curious people bring a diversity of opinions and the courage of their convictions to collaborate on ideas that change the course of business. By partnering with Glassdoor, Forrester was able to increase their candidate awareness by 325% (8). And Forrester was able to track 91% of their hires back to Glassdoor by asking candidates how they researched their employer brand. Else Ross, Employee Experience Specialist at Forrester says, "Glassdoor has become part of our common language. Glassdoor is an authentic way employees can take an active role in attracting and inspiring future colleagues. In doing so, they are making an immediate and meaningful impact on our brand."

railinc logo

Railinc is a data, IT and information services company serving the North American freight rail system. It has close to 290 employees and a small, three-person HR team to sort through hundreds of CVs each month. After seeing 6X higher traffic on Glassdoor than LinkedIn, Patrick O'Neill, Director of Corporate Communications at Railinc, says "Glassdoor is a no brainer if you want to be in front of where candidates are doing their homework. Some platforms are optional, but you simply have to be on Glassdoor."

busbank - What is The Informed Candidate?

The BusBank is a comprehensive group and event transportation management company headquartered in Chicago. They are the industry pioneer and leader in providing a single source for chartering a bus anywhere in North America. For a solid year, BusBank made 100% of its hires from Glassdoor (9), increasing candidate awareness by 75% (10). The company's Managing Director says, "With Glassdoor, we can easily manage our jobs. Candidates from CareerBuilder or LinkedIn just didn't seem to be good fits for us. But with Glassdoor, people can see our profile and get a sense of who we are and what we're looking for. Several of our customers have even told us they reviewed us on Glassdoor before deciding to do business with us. Glassdoor has been a fantastic resource for us."

base2 - What is The Informed Candidate?

Base2 Solutions helps clients solve the toughest challenges in systems engineering, software development, program management and security. Through their whole systems approach, Base2 develops smart, creative answers to help clients in highly regulated industries, saving them time and money. By partnering with Glassdoor, Base2 was able to significantly decrease spend on hiring, including four extremely hard-to-fill hires, such as Technical PM, Senior Software Engineer, Software Technical Manager and Senior QA Engineer. And they were able cut hiring costs across the board to $1,500 (£1,157) cost-per-hire, which is less than half of the industry average. Anny Bly, a Senior Recruiter at Base2 says, "When we started with Glassdoor, we made our first hire within 30 days for a software developer role. Glassdoor quickly became our number one source for quality applicants, and we could not be more satisfied!"

icims - What is The Informed Candidate?

iCIMS, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based talent acquisition solutions, announced that it has been named a Gold partner in Glassdoor's Preferred Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Partner Program. "iCIMS prides itself on providing strong partner integrations through iCIMS UNIFi, our Platform-as-a-Service framework, to enable our customers to manage and oversee all of their hiring technologies in one system of record," said Michael Wilczak, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at iCIMS. "This partnership with Glassdoor adds further value to our mutual customers by providing recruiters with tools that enable them to better understand the candidate journey, the types of information influencing their job search and how candidates are making decisions."


(1)  (e.g., culture, values, mission, business model, future plans, pros and cons about the workplace) (UK One Poll, May 2017)

(2)  Based on app-to-hire ratios in a 2015 study of 30 million applicants from a leading third-party recruitment agency

(3) Glassdoor.com Site Survey, January 2016

(4) Glassdoor.com UK Site Survey, Sept 2016

(5) Based on app-to-hire ratios in a 2015 study of 30 million applicants from a leading third-party recruitment agency

(6) As measured by traffic to Glassdoor Enhanced Profile

(7) Since partnering with Glassdoor (Sept 2015-Jan 2016)

(8) Since partnering with Glassdoor (October 2012-May 2016)

(9) Busbank's hires from April 2015-May 2016

(10)  Since partnering with Glassdoor (June 2015-May 2016)

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