Vault.com is a web site used by job seekers to get the lowdown on what it’s really like to work for a company — in full, unexpurgated, and unsubstantiated glory. Many publishers aren’t even listed, including the entire Holtzbrinck group, while Norton gets little traffic and virtually no messages. Same with S&S, which has had all of three messages posted in the last year.
On several publishing message boards, however, the emails are flying. Not surprisingly, given its size, one of those is Random House (though it’s not up to the level of Barnes & Noble, which has had 137 postings in that time). Recently the subject of salaries at Random has become a hot topic, with several workforce entrants astounded at the high (relatively) starting salaries. This led to some mean spirited (and misspelled) emails suggesting that Random’s hiring practices are not all that they could be. One ex-employee called the company “Racist House,” while another offers a mock list of job qualifications: “Blond Hair, Blue Eyes. Long legs a plus. . . .”
The debate over hiring and salary practices, however, has been raging since the site launched in ’99, and Random is certainly not alone. An ex-Scholastic employee slammed the company last week for its low pay and long hours. Another slammed an individual, which is against Vault policy (PT has since brought the posting to their attention), while one particularly frustrated ex-employee railed, “I sometimes thought that the entire company was an overblown psychological experiment to see just how much ‘wacky’ behavior a ‘real’ employee could take.” As for “picking managers out of the hat” (the method another email suggested was used by the company), “I think they pick some off the wall of the post office.”
Others seem more generous. “Anonymous,” apparently fed up with the carping, wrote: “I left Scholastic 2 years ago and have been miserable ever since. I didn’t know I had it so good . . . I long for the good old days. . . .” Hire that email!
