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.
You may think it a little excessive to produce a user manual for a simple job board. Except that this assumption would be wrong on at least one account: Lensa is not just a job board!
Unlike other career sites on the market, Lensa approaches job search from a job seeker perspective. We feel the problems you are facing: lack of transparency and lack of support. If job search were a maze, our services would be your compass. They take you from lost to found.
Read on to find out how you can leverage Lensa’s resources in your job search, then sign up and take us for our word. It is probably the best time investment you will make today.
Level 1: Getting Started
Step One: Set Up Your Profile
Registering and creating a profile could not be easier. All you need to do is type in your job title, location, and an email address where you wish to receive information from us. Providing a phone number is optional, but highly recommended, as it allows us to send you the latest opportunities and other career information directly to your phone.
By allowing notifications, you can be sure to instantly receive the latest matches. Telling us just a little more, like your desired compensation, education level, and experience, and whether you are interested in earning your degree will allow us to really fine-tune our services for your needs. In the profile settings, you can always update or change your personal information, job preferences, and resume.
Step Two: Identify Your Skills and Working Style by Playing a Game
Once you have registered on the site, you can play the workstyle game. This has been developed for Lensa by cognitive scientists, and it analyzes over 400 variables for an insightful report on your key behavioral strengths, your approach to solving problems, and your ideal work environment. Some of them you might even find surprising.
This all sounds very serious but do not worry, there is no right or wrong way to play the game, and it only takes about 8 minutes. The way you play it however reveals an awful lot about how you approach challenges.
Once you played the game, read the report, and have a clearer understanding of your soft skills, you may want to update your resume with them. The insight you gain on the type of work environment you thrive in will also help you better define your job search goals.
This insight about your work attitudes is also precious to us. It’s the magic ingredient that enables us to match you better with companies that fit your personality.
Step Three: Upload Your (updated) Resumé
Once you are happy with your resume, upload it to your Lensa profile. This is a step not to be missed as it will allow you to access information on how well you match with a company. You can always update or replace your resume – just go to Resume in Profile Settings. Here, you can also ask for a review by experts, as well as have it distributed to other job sites.
Level 2: Gathering Intel
Great – so you signed up, played the workstyle game, updated your resume, and uploaded it. You are starting to receive job matches tailored to your skills and preferences. What else is there to do? A lot, actually. You can now get super-knowledgeable about the job market, and specifically about the companies you are interested in.
Explore what you can do by clicking on the menu button in the top right corner of the main page. The following items will be displayed:
Browse Jobs
On the jobs page you will – unsurprisingly – find an ever-evolving list of job postings that we think you may be interested in based on the information you have shared with us. Clicking on a job, you will find the full description. Before you hit apply though, it is worth doing some research on the hiring company. Which brings us to…
Explore Companies
Now this is where things become really interesting!
Our company pages have tons of juicy information on hiring companies. Search for a specific company using the search bar, or check out the companies we think you may be interested in – these are displayed on the bottom half on the page.
Drilling down through one single company page, you gain access to a bunch of intel that you really do not see anywhere else compiled in this way. What can we say? Deep down, we’re data nerds and care deeply about getting this key aspect of Lensa right. No need to send us flowers… but we digress.
Aside from a brief description of core activities – that we wrote based on our own research – and the usual basic information, you will see a bunch of charts. These represent the following information for the given company.
This is followed by all the current job postings by the company.
Scrolling down, you will find a Q&A section where members of the Lensa community can ask and answer questions about the company. You can join the discussion yourself by contributing a question or an answer.
In the Reviews section below, you can learn what other users have to say about their experience at the company, or indeed you can share your own ratings and review.
Neat, isn’t it? We have really done all the due diligence for you. Aside from a thorough company overview, you also get an idea about all the variables we consider and compute when we match you up with a company. Which actually leads us to the next chapter:
Find Out Which Companies Match You
Based on the information you provided to us about yourself, your resume, and your workstyle game results, we now have a pretty good idea about your profile, and where you stand in your career path.
With this insight, paired with all the data we have about prospective employers (remember all those charts on our company pages? There’s actually so, so much more), our algorithms are able to pretty accurately match you with a company.
How Do I Match This Company? lets you discover what you and the company’s current workforce have in common.
Get Savvy About Job Titles
Here we provide well-researched information on top job titles that you see under the Teams tab on company pages. These could be useful to learn about roles when you are considering a career change, or check if two similar-sounding roles in job titles are actually the same.
Descriptions are not just the generic stuff you can find elsewhere, but include what these roles actually do on a daily basis. You will also gain insight about how physical, stressful, repetitive, or responsible a role is, what soft skills it requires, and whether it involves people management or travel.
Always wanted to know what a Revenue Cycle Analyst does every day but never dared to ask? Wondering what skills you need to become an Inclusion Specialist?
This is where you come to find out.
Level 3: Applying for a Job
Say one of the job postings grabbed your interest. You read the description, researched the organization and the job title, and checked whether you are a good match with the company. All good? Still sounds like the job of your dreams?
We think you are now ready to apply with confidence.
Know that Lensa partners with a number of other job boards in order to maximize the pool of opportunities for jobseekers. This means that you may be redirected to a different platform when you apply for a job. All you need to do is click the link and follow the instructions to complete the application process.
Good luck and let us know how it went – we are always happy to hear your success stories!
Summary
We hope that it is now clear for you what makes Lensa different. Our mission is to level out the playing field for jobseekers by leveraging our technical expertise, AI, and the data at our disposal. We are there by your side to support you along your entire career journey – sign up now and experience a different kind of job search.
For more advice on how to proceed, and the latest inside scoop on the job market, check out our blog.
