Looking for a job feels like such a one-sided effort. You put yourself out there, but you rarely get access to the same degree of intel on your prospective employers that you, as a candidate, are obligated to provide about yourself in your resume. Lensa is here to change that.
photo credit: Clem Onojeghuo / Unsplash
Unlike other career sites on the market, Lensa approaches job search from a job seeker perspective. This approach optimizes job searches that match the individual as well as revolutionizes recruitment.
Signing In
The first thing you are going to do, aside from knowing your career goals, is you’re going to go to the Lensa website and sign in. This process is very simple, you just enter the title of the job that you’re looking for, and Lensa will auto-suggest different professions as you type. Then you enter your location and email address and click submit. Once you click submit, the page will ask you for your name and phone number. This is simply to optimize recruitment by making it easier for employers to contact you once you submit your resume, as they already have your information through Lensa.
Your Profile
Something unique that Lensa offers is to create a detailed profile that outlines what professions you are interested in, your education level, previous work experience, as well as the salary range you are looking for. This is very helpful to both recruiters and yourself. By creating your profile, Lensa can find the right job for you because it knows what you’re looking for and what your qualifications are.
This profile allows the website to match companies to you and gives you the option of letting companies find you by making a resume available to them. When you create this profile, the recruitment process is essentially automated. All you need to do to complete the process is upload a great resume. Lensa accepts all of the standard files from pdfs, to docs, docx’s, and so on.
After you’ve uploaded your resume, you’ll even see a few job openings advertised to you right at the beginning that have been suggested based on the information you have given in your profile and resume combined.
Company Pages
Lensa has been collecting data on millions of companies since its founding and the Company Pages feature is going to make your career choices and your job search much easier. It gives you a dashboard where you can curate your own experience and look for the types of things that interest you. If you see a job opening that you like, all you have to do is click “read more,” and it will expand.
To make things even more convenient, you can usually apply directly. If you scroll down on the company page, there are all kinds of neat data points that will tell you a lot of statistics about the company you are interested in so you know what to look for in a company before taking the job.
You can filter by departments, you can look for how many years of experience employees in a particular division have, and it’s also going to give you information on the previous employers that people who work at a specific company now have and the industries that they have backgrounds in. This is really useful because it can give you an idea of how those individuals’ career path was structured and if you are following similar career goals, you can check out the companies that these people worked at before, follow their career path, get some inspiration from it, and also find companies that are hiring now for these positions.
There are also some interesting statistics on employee data such as age, gender, diversity, years spent at the company, and so on. Lastly, once you click on a particular profession, the website gives you an overview of what it takes to play a particular role in a company and also allows you to analyze a business environment.
Additionally, you can also find more really useful statistics on how many years people usually stay on a specific career trajectory, how long they last in these positions, how frequently they change companies, or how likely they are to change companies but still stay with the same title.
Basically, Lensa really gives you the opportunity, in a multitude of ways, to get to know a company before you apply. This lifts some of the burdens off of recruiters’ shoulders as you can read through all of the information that is given to you and you can make a very well-informed decision of whether to apply for a position at the company or not.
Matching a Company
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Perhaps the most revolutionary tool for recruitment that Lensa offers is the “how do I match this company” feature. This is really useful, and it is strongly encouraged for everyone to try it. The best way to explain it is that it is sort of like speed dating for job opportunities.
Based on all the information that Lensa has collected, such as job experience, your resume, your career goals, and more, Lensa’s algorithm is going to scan millions of data points on the companies that are affiliated with the website.
It will filter through and look at which of the most optimal and well-suited companies have job openings and will give you a suggestion of the exact companies that match you and your goals the best. Once Lensa selects a job for you, it gives you an overview of what you and the company have in common as well as specific statistics about the company itself.
It is strongly recommended to take advantage of Lensa’s resources in your job search. It is probably the best time investment you will make. Instead of filtering through hundreds of job openings and companies for weeks on end, Lensa will do it for you in mere minutes. The algorithm is strategic and practical with its recruitment, so it is guaranteed that the job opportunity is optimized for your level of experience.
You can also leverage Lensa’s knowledge and statistics about companies to your benefit if you choose to apply for a position manually. All in all, this website is incredibly useful, so make sure to use it as a resource while job-hunting.
