This guest post by CareerAlley may seem to be geared solely to job-seekers, but it also has value to recruiters.  When you're trying to evaluate a  prospect/passive candidate, having some information on how their company is perceived internally can give you useful ammunition when selling your opportunity.  It also can help recruiting researchers to prioritize which companies in a given niche to go after (e.g., unstable companies may be more ripe for talent-picking).

--Glenn Gutmacher, Editor

P.S.  Please note that I am now blogging about sourcing and recruiting research primarily on JobMachine.  I encourage you to subscribe to my feed there at

http://jobmachine.net/blog/111/feed

How does your company rate?

by CareerAlley

Thanks to PingMyCompany.com for reminding me to write about how to reseach how people feel about a particular company. As an example, Fortune magazine has an annual issue where they focus on the "100 Best Companies to Work for 2008" (see review below). In this post I will highlight several links that provide this type of information. Since PingMyCompany.com was kind enough to suggest the topic, let's start with their site!

Company Research:

• PingMyCompany.com - To quote their website tag, pingmycompany.com is "a tool to let everyone share their love/hate for the companies they have worked, want to work or never work for!!". This site (currently in beta) is as valuable as its users make it. It allows users to share their thoughts on any aspect of the company that they would like to comment on (salary, culture, products, career growth, interview process, etc.), there is no limit. This is a two way street, as it not only allows individuals to see what others think but also allows companies to see what people (probably their employees) think about them. The site becomes more valuable over time as the database increases with comments on specific companies and the database the number of companies increases. Best of all, the site allows individuals to post their thoughts or "pings" anonymously (so no concern about your company finding out what you posted). By the way, this site is free.
• Fortune Magazine - "100 Best Companies to Work for 2008" - While pingmycompany.com is a "live" site that is continually updated by users, Fortune's ""100 Best Companies to Work for" is a snapshot in time on a very narrow range of companies. Still, if you are searching for a job and want to know which companies are good to work for, this is a good place to start. In addition to the "Best Companies" overall, the site has more specific searches such as:
  • Best employers in your state
  • 25 top paying companies
  • A variety of associated article
• Jobvent.com - This site is similar to pingmycompany in purpose but structured differently. Basically set-up as "I hate my job" versus "I love my job", you rate a company across set categories and the site will list the rating. The site seems to have quite a few companies listed. I'm assuming that the ratings are weighted based on the number of reviews. As the title indicates, this is more of a "venting" site than a site that provides value added information. Still, it is worth a look to get a view of what people think. You should note the number of reviews for any one company (some have only one or two while others have 30 or 40)