Should you get a job at Busi­ness Insider?

With over 78 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors per month Busi­ness Insid­er has achieved a lot since its found­ing in 2007 by Hen­ry Blod­get, a for­mer top Wall Street research direc­tor who was banned from the secu­ri­ties indus­try for life.

Pub­lished in 12 coun­tries, Busi­ness Insid­er is ranked as the #1 busi­ness web­site by Com­score.

Are Jobs at Busi­ness Insid­er bet­ter than oth­er media companies?

Hen­ry Blodget’s sec­ond time around has been far more suc­cess­ful than his first.  With a recent sale to Axel Springer for $343 mil­lion dol­lars, Busi­ness Insid­er has secured sig­nif­i­cant growth capital.

In April of 2016 Blod­get shared his big vision for Busi­ness Insid­er to become the “finan­cial pub­li­ca­tion of record for the dig­i­tal gen­er­a­tion.” He has shared with staffers anoth­er ambi­tious goal — attract­ing a bil­lion read­ers to Busi­ness Insid­er’s con­stel­la­tion of sites.

What is it Like to Work in a Job at Busi­ness Insider?

Work­ing at one of the fastest grow­ing busi­ness pub­li­ca­tions is not all peach­es and cream.  In 2016 there was some­what of an exo­dus of top edi­to­r­i­al staff.  Some talked about the pres­sure for reporters and edi­tors to deliv­er scoops or that traf­fic took prece­dence over enter­prise reporting.

“Unless you were writ­ing sto­ries about Chris Prat­t’s jeans… you were seen as some­one not car­ry­ing your weight,” said one employ­ee who left recently.

Anoth­er ex-staff mem­ber said that “man­age­ment want­ed scoops, but only if they were easy and we could get them quickly.”

“This com­bi­na­tion of demands was chal­leng­ing and often seemed insur­mount­able,” the for­mer staff mem­ber said.   It has been stat­ed that reporters were expect­ed to gen­er­ate 1,000,000 vis­i­tors to their sto­ries each month.

Accord­ing to Glass­door 89% approve of the CEO and 78% would rec­om­mend work­ing at Busi­ness Insid­er to a friend.

Some of the pros and cons of work­ing at Busi­ness Insid­er are:

Great place to meet great peo­ple”, “It’s a real­ly excit­ing place to work with great work/life bal­ance” , “Smart peo­ple, fast-paced envi­ron­ment, and chal­leng­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties” , “Nice, smart peo­ple, accel­er­at­ed growth, and great expo­sure” and “A great team that cares about the con­tent, the report­ing, and the company” 

“You have month­ly goals for how many page views you have to reach which can be stress­ful”, “Lots of “click-bait” and “Curios­i­ty gap­ping” instead of good con­tent”, “No one knows what they are doing, includ­ing the senior edi­tors”, “There was a lot of turnover in edi­tor posi­tions which result­ed in back­ups based on their learn­ing curves”, “BPO-like work envi­ron­ment, impos­si­ble tar­gets, no field report­ing or original/analytic work done by staff”

Axel Springer and Busi­ness Insid­er Jobs

Ger­many-based Axel Springer, earns $3.39 Bil­lion in annu­al rev­enues and owns news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, TV chan­nels, radio sta­tions, and web­sites in 35 coun­tries.  Its biggest titles in Ger­many include the dai­ly news­pa­pers B.Z., Bild, and Die Welt.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, Axel Springer acquired 88% of Busi­ness Insid­er for $343 mil­lion in cash, bring­ing its total stake up to 97%.

Future of Busi­ness Insider

The acqui­si­tion by Axel Springer, a $3.39 bil­lion dol­lar media pow­er­house, ties both Busi­ness Insid­er co-founder Hen­ry Blod­get and his COO Julie Hansen into what Axel Springer described as a 10-year, equi­ty-based reten­tion deal. That means a cer­tain amount of com­pen­sa­tion is based on the two stay­ing with the Ger­man media com­pa­ny to run the Busi­ness Insid­er unit for the next decade.

If you’re look­ing for a job at a fast paced com­pa­ny poised to grow to over 1 bil­lion vis­i­tors a month then Busi­ness Insid­er could be a great place for you.

Take a look at the Busi­ness Insid­er Jobs in the Unit­ed States: