Zillow reviews

4.6

92% would recommend to a friend

(1,699 total reviews)
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Jeremy Wacksman

96% approve of CEO

75% positive business outlook

Zillow has an employee rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars, based on 1,699 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Zillow employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Jan 5, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You can dress casual, very casual.

Cons

Call time is huge, micromanagement, with managers are only looking out for themselves. The company does not invest too much in the individual employee because the turnover rate is so high. The product is hard to sell because so many agents are upset about the Zestimate. Selling to real estate agents is hard because they are RUDE. Monthly quotas which are very difficult to achieve.

1.0
Dec 24, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

On a surface level, the work culture is positive. Veteran employees are willing to offer advice.

Cons

The whole premise of the company is based on misinformation. The Zestimate is one thing but it's difficult to get behind selling a product when the listing information is outdated, doesn't represent reality, and only causes headaches for real estate agents... that they're very willing to let you know about call after call. The company touts their traffic numbers but I'd be curious how much of that is inflated by people trying to solve a problem the site has created for them. Being a new rep is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons but one the company will have to confront is an utter lack of availability that doesn't meet demand. 80% of "successful" calls where the agent wants to buy end in you only being able to offer a ZIP two hours away from them that nobody wants. A saturation point is nearing and for new reps without a book of business, their best hope is to get clients on a waiting list and get lucky. The veteran reps with a book of business are much more likely to succeed because their clients get waitlist priority. Even if Zillow changes this and opens the program to more people, it will lose its exclusivity and alienate existing Premier Agents. While the metrics are demanding and about twice as much as expected on a daily basis as in other companies, the issue isn't so much with the expectations; rather, it's the paradoxical ramifications of meeting those expectations. Since the company requires 210 minutes of talk time each day, you must constantly be dialing. The problem with this is if your goal is to meet talk time, it's very difficult to do so if you're trying advanced prospecting and looking to find people who haven't been called. You're left using run-of-the-mill prospecting tools where everybody has been called. While upper management would dismiss this, it's pretty simple: you choose talk time or sales. You better be a great telemarketer because that's exactly what this job is. You're calling the most solicited profession and they not only likely hate Zillow, they get 10 sales calls a day from similar companies. There is nothing consultative about closing deals at Zillow- you better be able to have a "shotgun" approach and be as "salesy" as it comes.

2.0
Dec 21, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Super friendly people to work with, pay isn't bad, great office in the nicest building in down town, fresh fruit every morning, bus pass, a great company culture and a rockin' year end party.

Cons

None of the pros I just listed actually matter. You are a telemarketer that has to cold call 100 real estate agents everyday who do not want to be called. Trust me, they get cold-called everyday and have memorized responses to get off the phone with you. 75% of the time, those agents who do buy are too incompetent to fully utilize the program, and then they blame you for it. The worst part is (and this is where all the stress comes from) you are held responsible for things outside of your control. You have a talk-time quota everyday, meaning your phone has to be connected on calls for 3 1/2 hours a day. Sounds easy? Its incredibly hard and I've even seen senior reps star-6-7 from their own cell phones at the end of the day and let the phone sit there to pad their call time. You can't control if agents pick up the phone, you can't control if they hang up, but that doesn't matter. I've literally made 150 calls a day with low talk time minutes and been told I was not trying. I could see my manager felt for me, but his boss reamed him out because of me, so his hands were tied. I don't have anything bad to say about the company or anything. Its just that the work you will be doing in this specific position sucks. Forever. A senior rep admitted to me that, after 4 years, its just as hard. But I could see she was in her early thirties and didn't have where else to go. There's a lot of those. The trainers see you as a number, not a person. You can see it in their eyes when they look at you. They mentally calculate how long til you wash out and when the new batch comes in and how long til they wash out. They also tell you turn over is 'low' and keep you in a system (you're only among your training class of newbies) that minimizes your ability to hear office rumors. Unfortunately that's where the truth is. And the truth is the turn over is around 80%; the 20% that stick are dog-eat-dog, and you will never be one of the super reps that they will hold up to you as a shining example in training class, who close 140k a month. Those people are 1 in 1000. Oh and btw, you want to move to management? Good luck. Better be willing to show up at 6:45 am and leave at 5:30 pm. For a whole year plus. Hour long lunch breaks are frowned on. I have to work while eating at my desk which is fine I guess, but lets not pretend that's the norm across all businesses. I mean my friend was put on anxiety medication from this job. I'm not making that up. He told me he would wake up at 4 am, stressed out from a dream about selling a zip code. I would have thought that that's crazy, but I had those dreams too.... I'll be gone soon.

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