IN PURSUIT from Glassdoor is a weekly podcast that we produced over two seasons. We worked closely with Glassdoor’s team to create it. Our crew started with our host and a dedicated in-house Glassdoor producer. We later added audio editors, a studio engineer, and marketing experts.

Development

Glassdoor had never done a podcast before. So the team laid considerable groundwork to get buy in from C-suite management. We looked at key performance indicators we needed to deliver on, studied similar podcasts, and developed topics for the show that would attract the audience of job-seekers Glassdoor serves. An early goal was to bring new visitors to the Glassdoor website. Advised by Red Cup, the Glassdoor team set up a landing page. Together we worked on the pitch language, show title, show description, and our forward-facing message that would bring listeners to us.

Pre-production and Guests

Collaborating with Glassdoor, Red Cup created an audio trailer to pitch the most appealing parts of the show: an engaging host, useful information for job hunters, and personal stories from guests who were still working out their lives. We build a large “wish list” of potential guests and started to reach out to them. Red Cup specializes in guest research. While in the past we’ve bought databases, currently our “rolodex” is pretty full and we can draw on existing resources and research to find the right guest for your show.

Studio Production

IN PURSUIT was produced in studios in San Francisco, New York, Denver, Seattle, and Santa Monica. It’s a common practice for us to get the host in one studio, say in San Francisco, and the guest in another, New York for example, and record each track in a studio setting. We tie the sessions together with Zoom or conference calls. This allows for tremendous flexibility in getting guests, because location doesn’t really matter. We’ve built up a network friends and partner studios that serves us and our clients well. Red Cup collaborated with the Glassdoor team to write host introductions to each episode, questions for the guests, and show titles and descriptions. We worked together to be sure we had a guest list that reflected diversity and dug into the hot-button topics that the host wanted to talk about. Lee Schneider, production lead, attended all recording sessions in person or remotely via Zoom or conference call, to be sure we were capturing the right narrative arc from our guests, and to direct the host on her continuity reads, intros and outros. Session coaching during recordings raises the level of the podcast and the production team feels supported.

Post-Production

Our editing process begins with transcripts of every episode. We post work-in-progress transcripts of every episode for everyone on the team to comment on. The transcript allows us to preview what the flow of conversation might sound like in the episode, how long it will run, and if we need any retakes of questions or additional recording of continuity material from the host. The post production team usually includes Lee Schneider as project lead, assisted by editors and mixers who bring each episode in to the proper running time and with the right audio specs for podcast distribution. We take out “false starts,” “ums” and and long pauses, making the listening experience as best as we can make it. Glassdoor’s podcast included commercial ad spots, so we built those into the appropriate episodes with music and host voice to bridge.

Distribution

Working with Glassdoor, we chose a host, Simplecast, from several choices, including Art19, Podbean, or Libsyn. Red Cup has relationships at all of those platforms. The podcast has met Glassdoor’s goals by driving traffic to the Glassdoor website. The episodes remain popular with our Brené Brown episode still receiving thousands of downloads.