Excellent point. A glassdoor competitor cannot use the Consumer Reports model since you can't review the working conditions of a company without being inside it.
It shouldn't take much money to set up and run a review site so monetization should be a soluble problem. On a 6 figure budget you won't be as slick as competitors but if you're competing on trustworthiness...
The biggest problem is going to be combating gamification, that'll be very hard on a 6 figure budget.
And even your non-profit suggestion is a problem because what if a company donates $1M with strings attached?
I really think the only solution is that all money has to come from consumers. Job hunting is important enough that people would be willing to shell out for it, but only once you have a sufficient pool of reviews. So a real chicken and egg problem here.
Ah, to clarify my donation-based suggestion was for users to donate, not companies. Regardless, yes, if the majority of the money comes from a minority of the userbase (whether it be users and/or companies), you're going to have a bad incentive. However, making it a non-profit removes the burden of increasing revenue YoY.
I think it's going to be very difficult to make it a viable business, particularly for the job market. It's a usually a fairly fixed size, and when it's growing it's usually not when people shell out for extra subscriptions. Could it work? Sure. But it's a business that while it might be profitable, it won't be growable. That'll make getting investments difficult, and the whole chicken and egg problem that much more difficult to overcome.
It shouldn't take much money to set up and run a review site so monetization should be a soluble problem. On a 6 figure budget you won't be as slick as competitors but if you're competing on trustworthiness...
The biggest problem is going to be combating gamification, that'll be very hard on a 6 figure budget.
And even your non-profit suggestion is a problem because what if a company donates $1M with strings attached?
I really think the only solution is that all money has to come from consumers. Job hunting is important enough that people would be willing to shell out for it, but only once you have a sufficient pool of reviews. So a real chicken and egg problem here.