I had high expectations going into the interview process with the company that wants to 'disrupt a $90 billion recruiting market' and promotes employer branding to its B2B customers - was expecting an above average experience, a clearly defined role, a quick and transparent process, consistent messages and feedback. Unfortunately they did not keep up with my expectations. On the positive: - the process was really quick; got connected to the recruiter through a referral, she set-up a 30min call with her within days, spoke to her and talked to the hiring manager/CMO only few days later. The recruiter did also a nice job describing the process. Overall definitely a quick and transparent approach that I want to high-light because it is not standard. On the 'should be better': - the job description seems to be a mix of a couple of different roles, e.g. lots of analytics topics in there that I did not hear from the CMO or recruiter. - got mixed messages from the recruiter and CMO. The recruiter emphasized it's an executive role. Heard quite the opposite from the CMO, who said that 90% are operation, only little strategy work. Think he is basically looking for a digital marketing manager with room to grow and not for a director. If I knew that earlier, would not have been interested. - maybe the biggest 'aha-moment' for me: the CMO did not share the greatest vision how to improve engagement significantly for glassdoor. He explained that he wanted to focus on digital/engagement campaigns. Referred to LinkedIn and said that he liked what they do with notifications and campaigns. I agree, LinkedIn is great, but the reason I go there every day is that their product is great and engaging, not their notifications. Glassdoor is not quite there today, their product is solid but not great. So long-story short, I think there is a ton of strategy, messaging and product work to do to bring back user segments more often. Ramping up tactical campaigns will add to that but not help glassdoor make big jumps. Also, sounded like the product group did not report to the CMO, which felt strange. - the final feedback from glassdoor was 'business as usual', a quick email saying 'thank you, but we are moving forward with other candidates'. No feedback or reasoning why. Not that I don't understand why, but again, expect from a company that wants to shake up the recruiting industry to do better. I reached out to the recruiter to hear about other jobs but did not get a response. Summary: think the driving engagement for glassdoor is an exciting topic - realize that I did not do the best job selling myself and am not what they are looking for but also don't share their vision.

I was recruited through Linkedin by the Glassdoor recruiter in early November. I did not get back to the recruiter for a few weeks but luckily the job was still open. The Glassdoor recruiter missed our first phone interview which I thought was kind of unprofessional but she immediately contacted me, apologized and we set up a meeting for the following day. We had a great conversation and she provided a thorough overview about the position and the job. She immediately set up a phone interview with the CMO within the next few days. My first phone call with the CMO was pretty casual and we had a very open conversation about the role, the challenges, as well as the opportunity. I was asked about my background and my current job situation and I felt our conversation had a natural flow the entire time. With that said, I was invited to come onsite and meet other members of the Marketing and Product team. I met with 4 people over the phone in my first round of interviews due to some flooding issues in the area. Beginning of the conversations was mainly a brief overview about myself and then after that it was more of a brainstorming session about how to tackle some of the Engagement problems on the website. These types of interviews can be really tough because in most cases you have to really think on your feet and really know what you are talking about. I was asked to come up with different types of engagement programs for different types of members - Content Users, Job Seekers, Power Users. I was asked how I would convert Job seekers into content users and vice versa. Again, lot's of idea generation and pretty hard to do over the phone. Also, the interviews went over 30 minutes so it was kind of difficult managing the next person calling in while I was in the middle of answering a question. I made it to the next round of interviews where I was finally able to come onsite. Met with the Co-founder, the VP of Product and a panel of Product and Marketing team members. Again, some of the same stuff, more of a brainstorming/whiteboarding session around engagement and how to tackle some of the current issues the website is facing. I would say that 30 minutes was not really enough time, we pretty much ran over in every interview. I then had follow-up calls with the CEO, the Co-Founder and the CMO. One of the interesting things I discussed with the CEO was about the reviews on my current company. There were some scathing reviews from some former employees and he wanted to know what we learned as a company from those reviews, as well as what I learned from being a leader. I really enjoyed our conversation and I felt like this was someone who really cared about his product. Overall, a pretty lengthy process, but I think for this position it made sense.