Jobscan reviews

3.3

58% would recommend to a friend

(37 total reviews)

James Hu

55% approve of CEO

60% positive business outlook

Jobscan has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 37 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Jobscan employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

37 reviews
1.0
Feb 11, 2022

A sad excuse for a startup

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Company is profitable (so far). Remote work. Supportive, talented coworkers.

Cons

Jobscan operates under the "move fast and break things" mantra. But the only thing moving quickly is employee turnover. Every executive has left the company recently, and every other week I hear another former coworker has left. The CEO is getting in the way of Jobscan's success. While he does encourage new ideas and opinions, employee ideas often fall on deaf ears. This lack of innovation and reliance on shoddy business instincts is killing Jobscan. Competition from LinkedIn, Indeed, and even smaller startups are making Jobscan irrelevant, expensive, and outdated. I concur with other recent reviews that the CEO is ruining the company. Micromanagement is the name of the game. The CEO is demeaning in his communication with employees, and prefers negative reinforcement. He is also notorious for taking several-month long trips overseas, so expect late night meetings and curt messages. There was a point where the CEO took leadership training, but a leadership coach couldn't get through to him. Employees have stood up to him, executives have stood up to him, surveys were done showing that over half of the company was unhappy at work. Nothing changed, and it only got worse over time. With no checks and balances left, the company outlook is bleak. My former coworkers were truly talented, dedicated individuals that at one point really did believe in Jobscan and were eager to support it's growth. It was tragic seeing all that motivation evaporate so quickly. The CEO has been told numerous times how to resolve the company's issues and propel Jobscan to the next level: trust your employees. This is too much to expect from him.

avatar
Jobscan Response
3y
James here, CEO of Jobscan. Very much appreciate you spending the time writing this review. I've reflected on your feedback deeply. I take full responsibility for the turnover we had earlier this year. Honestly, I wanted the company to accelerate so I thought it'd be a great idea to hire experienced lieutenants/executives from outside the company to do so. I was wrong. I was hands-off for a year to see how they'd do. A year later, management's salary expenses 2x and there was no revenue growth after 12 months. It was a negative ROI scenario. The sad part is these executives were likable people but the business metrics simply weren't met. They bonded with their teams so some folks saw them as "good leaders" emotionally when business performance was more important. And we did exactly that. Since we promoted our senior engineer to be the Head of Engineering, we have greatly accelerated our engineering output. This year, we launched the job tracker, chrome extension, continuous integration/deployment, created fast/slow lanes for much faster launches, rolled out SPA, and upgraded the main dashboard, just to name a few. In terms of innovation, the job tracker we just launched is an idea of our senior front-end engineer. And it is now a full-blown product on its own. We will also be commercializing another 10% project soon and have several machine-learning initiatives next year. In terms of micromanagement - I prefer not to micromanage anyone as it takes my focus away from the strategy and more important matters. To be frank, yes, I did micromanage for the underperforming individuals, which didn't quite work out so well. At the end of the day, it was a mis-hire from the start and I take responsibility for it. We have since made the following changes: 1. Increased the hiring bar so everyone we hire is a fit and a high performer. 2. Set clear OKRs and goals and I have since being hands-off to give freedom for teams to excel. 3. Changed my mindset to be more of a coach instead of a manager. In terms of trips, I visit Asia twice a year due to family reasons and I wake up at 6am and start meetings at 7am, which is 4pm PT. I don't schedule meetings past 7pm PT unless it's important. Since the wave of turnover earlier in 2022, we have re-hired 10 more talented individuals across engineering, marketing, and data teams. 3 of which were former entrepreneurs themselves. Projects are getting done much faster and revenue continues to grow as the cultural changes seem to be making a difference. Jobscan is again profitable this year and we're already seeing an accelerated traffic growth. 2023 is poised to be an even better year since the world will be in need of our service in this volatile times. I encourage anyone seeing this to meet with our team without my presence. Have a real conversation with our team will offer you much more insights about our future.
1.0
Feb 8, 2022

Run, don’t walk. Not worth it.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent benefits. Fully remote. Nice coworkers. Product is profitable for now.

Cons

Where do I start…. Top managements and employees are dropping like flies. Turnover rate is so high that’s it’s almost embarrassing. No one can tolerate working with the CEO who is also the founder. He is not equipped or qualified to be a CEO. He has zero leadership skill and doesn’t trust his employees. Every employee is brought in for their skill sets but he still questions everyone and only want things his way. He expects everyone to help grow the business 2x but doesn’t provide the tools or paths and just stand in everybody’s way. If someone brings up an idea to improve the product, he simply would just shut them down. CEO also makes employees take late night meetings with no respect employees’ boundaries and work life balance. He is also super rude and condescending when communicating to employees.

avatar
Jobscan Response
3y
James here, CEO of Jobscan. Since this feedback is quite similar to the previous one (and likely posted by the same person), I will repeat myself here: Very much appreciate you spending the time writing this review. I've reflected on your feedback deeply. I take full responsibility for the turnover we had earlier this year. Honestly, I wanted the company to accelerate so I thought it'd be a great idea to hire experienced lieutenants/executives from outside the company to do so. I was wrong. I was hands-off for a year to see how they'd do. A year later, management's salary expenses 2x and there was no revenue growth after 12 months. It was a negative ROI scenario. The sad part is these executives were likable people but the business metrics simply weren't met. They bonded with their teams so some folks saw them as "good leaders" emotionally when business performance was more important. I learned that the current phase ofJobscan doesn't need executives from companies larger than 150 people. We should be promoting individual contributors who're excellent at what they do to become the leaders of the company. And we did exactly that. Since we promoted our senior engineer to be the Head of Engineering, we have greatly accelerated our engineering output. This year, we launched the job tracker, chrome extension, continuous integration/deployment, created fast/slow lanes for much faster launches, rolled out SPA (Single Page Application), and upgraded the main dashboard, just to name a few. In terms of innovation, the job tracker we just launched is an idea of our senior front-end engineer. And it is now a full-blown product on its own. We will also be commercializing another 10% project soon and have several machine-learning initiatives next year. In terms of micromanagement - I prefer not to micromanage anyone as it takes my focus away from the strategy and more important matters. To be frank, yes, I did micromanage for the underperforming individuals, which didn't quite work out so well. At the end of the day, it was a mis-hire from the start and I take responsibility for it. We have since made the following changes: 1. Increased the hiring bar so everyone we hire is a fit and a high performer. 2. Set clear OKRs and goals and I have since being hands-off to give freedom for teams to excel. 3. Changed my mindset to be more of a coach instead of a manager. In terms of trips, I visit Asia twice a year due to family reasons and I wake up at 6am and start meetings at 7am, which is 4pm PT. I don't schedule meetings past 7pm PT unless it's important. Since the wave of turnover earlier in 2022, we have re-hired 10 more talented individuals across engineering, marketing, and data teams. 3 of which were former entrepreneurs themselves. Projects are getting done much faster and revenue continues to grow as the cultural changes seem to be making a difference. Jobscan is again profitable this year and we're already seeing an accelerated traffic growth. 2023 is poised to be an even better year since the world will be in need of our service in this volatile times. I encourage anyone seeing this to meet with our team without my presence. Have a real conversation with our team will offer you much more insights about our future.
1.0
Jan 26, 2022

CEO running employees (and the business) to the ground.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company is profitable and provides adequate benefits. Other team members were kind people.

Cons

Can confirm and completely agree with everything in the “Unqualified, narcissistic CEO” review below. You'd think a company in the job search & employment industry would realize how easy it is to lose employees when you don't treat them well. The environment at Jobscan has changed almost entirely in less than a year. The company was running more successfully, and with a better work environment when the CEO was away on sabbatical and barely involved in the day-to-day operations. Since his return, all 3 executive VP’s have left, and it seems like there’s a new manager or individual contributor leaving every other week. The CEO’s lack of experience, leadership ability, and care for his employees was obvious immediately upon his return…understandably resulting in this mass exodus. It’s the classic tale of a startup founder who got lucky and failed to grow and improve their personal skills and leadership abilities along with the business, but has an ego big enough to keep them in denial. He has a complete lack of trust, value, or respect for his employee’s experience in their respective fields or their personal lives (he recently decided to spend two months in Asia and insisted on the U.S. team changing their schedules to take frequent night meetings…even though he was the only one with the different time zone). As stated in the other review, the disrespect, manipulation, and total lack of awareness for oneself and others exhibited by the CEO was consistent and destructive to employee mental health. Even the feedback from an executive coach, and many internal team members wouldn’t make him believe it. And, unfortunately, no one is getting paid nearly enough to make dealing with him worth it.

avatar
Jobscan Response
3y
James here, CEO of Jobscan. Since this feedback is quite similar to the previous one (and likely posted by the same person), I will repeat myself here: Very much appreciate you spending the time writing this review. I've reflected on your feedback deeply. I take full responsibility for the turnover we had earlier this year. Honestly, I wanted the company to accelerate so I thought it'd be a great idea to hire experienced lieutenants/executives from outside the company to do so. I was wrong. I was hands-off for a year to see how they'd do. A year later, management's salary expenses 2x and there was no revenue growth after 12 months. It was a negative ROI scenario. The sad part is these executives were likable people but the business metrics simply weren't met. They bonded with their teams so some folks saw them as "good leaders" emotionally when business performance was more important. I learned that the current phase ofJobscan doesn't need executives from companies larger than 150 people. We should be promoting individual contributors who're excellent at what they do to become the leaders of the company. And we did exactly that. Since we promoted our senior engineer to be the Head of Engineering, we have greatly accelerated our engineering output. This year, we launched the job tracker, chrome extension, continuous integration/deployment, created fast/slow lanes for much faster launches, rolled out SPA (Single Page Application), and upgraded the main dashboard, just to name a few. In terms of innovation, the job tracker we just launched is an idea of our senior front-end engineer. And it is now a full-blown product on its own. We will also be commercializing another 10% project soon and have several machine-learning initiatives next year. In terms of micromanagement - I prefer not to micromanage anyone as it takes my focus away from the strategy and more important matters. To be frank, yes, I did micromanage for the underperforming individuals, which didn't quite work out so well. At the end of the day, it was a mis-hire from the start and I take responsibility for it. We have since made the following changes: 1. Increased the hiring bar so everyone we hire is a fit and a high performer. 2. Set clear OKRs and goals and I have since being hands-off to give freedom for teams to excel. 3. Changed my mindset to be more of a coach instead of a manager. In terms of trips, I visit Asia twice a year due to family reasons and I wake up at 6am and start meetings at 7am, which is 4pm PT. I don't schedule meetings past 7pm PT unless it's important. Since the wave of turnover earlier in 2022, we have re-hired 10 more talented individuals across engineering, marketing, and data teams. 3 of which were former entrepreneurs themselves. Projects are getting done much faster and revenue continues to grow as the cultural changes seem to be making a difference. Jobscan is again profitable this year and we're already seeing an accelerated traffic growth. 2023 is poised to be an even better year since the world will be in need of our service in this volatile times. I encourage anyone seeing this to meet with our team without my presence. Have a real conversation with our team will offer you much more insights about our future.
Viewing 22 - 24 of 37 Reviews

Glassdoor has 43 Jobscan reviews submitted anonymously by Jobscan employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Jobscan is right for you.