Navigating the highly competitive job market is always a challenge. The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone.
Many online job portals can help to match you with the right employer both for short-term solutions and for long-term career prospects. Each job portal will try to stand out from the crowd by either appealing to a niche or offering a different kind of user experience.
In this short article, we’ll take a closer look at LinkedIn, see what they offer, and why Lensa is a better option for job seekers.
LinkedIn: Core Features
First and foremost, LinkedIn is a social media platform. It is designed to enable business professionals to network, share, and promote their brands and (to a lesser extent) job hunt.
- Networking – Follow other business professionals and receive notifications whenever they post new content
- Sharing content – Upload publications, articles, blog posts, and projects so that members of your network can stay up to date on your creations and achievements
- Skill assessments – complete tasks and/or tests to demonstrate to your network or prospective employers that you are a skilled professional
- Job search – Search for available job opportunities according to keywords. LinkedIn will also recommend opportunities for you based on your profile.
Using LinkedIn to Find a Job: a lengthy process
Unless you are active on LinkedIn – networking, posting articles and achievements, taking skills assessments, etc. – using LinkedIn for your job search is not likely to yield results. The main reason for this is that the companies that post jobs on LinkedIn often use LinkedIn to assess the recruits (by reviewing the candidate’s LinkedIn content history, resume, skill assessments, etc.). Concretely, this means that applicants without a strong presence on LinkedIn will not likely get the consideration their candidacy may deserve.
Traditionally, job seekers would find a job offer that appeals to them, they’d tweak their resume and craft their cover letter accordingly, send them off, and hope to be called in for an interview.
With LinkedIn, the process is far more complicated. With LinkedIn, the job applicant is asked to do the following (among other tasks):
- Pay $29.99 for a monthly premium membership (optional but highly encouraged)
- Craft a resume and a cover letter for the relevant job offer
- Craft a resume and cover letter specifically for the applicant’s LinkedIn profile
- Take various skill assessment exams to be certified by LinkedIn
- Create and curate a comprehensive list of business connections
- Write and upload articles, reviews, and blog posts for LinkedIn
LinkedIn: Pros and Cons
Pros
Popularity – LinkedIn is a very popular social media platform (reportedly over 800 million members.
Staying up to date – With notifications, you can follow companies and business professionals, stay up to date on their activities, and expand your network.
Cons
Requires constant upkeep – As is the case with any social media platform, using LinkedIn requires a considerable amount of time and effort to keep your profile current. If you don’t post regularly, you are unlikely to stand out from other users.
Price point – While setting up a basic account is free, the advanced features come at a subscription cost.
Spam – Social media networks must be fed. LinkedIn users are continuously solicited to post content, network, upgrade their subscription plans, etc.
Poor job vetting – Posting a job offer on LinkedIn is free (initially), and because their business model places a premium on quantity, that often comes at the expense of quality. LinkedIn users frequently complain about scams and customer service’s disinterest in filtering them out.
LinkedIn: User Feedback
The ultimate tale of the tape comes down to user feedback. What are users saying about LinkedIn?
While experiences vary, as you can see from the screenshot above, the overall user feedback on LinkedIn is not very good. In fact, LinkedIn has received the relatively uncommon score of ‘Bad’ according to an aggregate of nearly 1,000 user reviews.
Frequent complaints center around the overwhelming amount of spam the site sends to its users, the ‘questionable’ handling and use of sensitive data complied from its users, and the preponderance of scam listings the site is reported to host and turn a blind eye to.
By perusing the many site reviews, you will find frequent mentions of the following:
- Scams (unsafe job searches and customer service showing no concern over the many reported cases of abuse)
- Censorship (articles and blog posts being taken down and users denied access to their accounts for seemingly incomprehensible reasons)
- Spam (it defeats the purpose of job search notifications if the site continuously alerts users about ‘new products’, ‘new premium subscription promotions’, or ‘reminders to post and network’)
LinkedIn: In a Nutshell
LinkedIn is a social media platform that allows users to network with business professionals, show off their work, and stay up to date with companies and other professionals they follow.
When you’re using LinkedIn – or any other social media platform, for that matter – you are constantly being solicited to create content, interact, upload, and upgrade. Maintaining a LinkedIn profile is almost a job in and of itself. In fact, many freelance writers round out their income by managing other people’s LinkedIn profiles for them.
There are many job opportunities listed on LinkedIn. But job seekers should be extra vigilant when using LinkedIn to find a job, as there is little to no vetting and a large number of users warn about scams and less-than-legitimate job offers.
Using Lensa to Find a Job
Lensa is a job search platform. It is not a social media platform. The mission of Lensa is not to create a community, not to ask its users to continuously provide them with content and regularly interact with other users. The mission of Lensa is far more direct and focused: to have a massive impact on job seekers who are striving for a meaningful career and, by doing so, also have a positive impact on the industry as well.
Lensa Is Not Your Traditional Job Portal
Unlike other online job portals, Lensa uses the latest AI business intelligence to educate job seekers on the most suitable job openings, inform them on the trends in hiring practices, and provide them with insights into alternative career paths.
Lensa’s AI technology gathers and analyzes historical data from literally billions of job descriptions, resumes, and job seekers’ work history to not only orient job seekers toward jobs that are likely to be a good fit but also toward those jobs that will better lead them along their chosen career path.
How Lensa’s Business Model Differs from LinkedIn’s
The most obvious difference between Lensa’s business model and LinkedIn’s is where the money comes from. LinkedIn charges its users through a selection of subscription offers.
- Premium Career costs $29.99 per month (or $239.88 if you choose to pay for the entire year upfront)
- Premium Business costs $59.99 per month (or $575.88 if you choose to pay for the entire year upfront)
- Premium Sales costs $79.99 per month (or $779.88 if you choose to pay for the entire year upfront)
- Premium Hiring costs $119.95 per month (or $1,199.40 if you choose to pay for the entire year upfront)
LinkedIn also makes money from recruiters who post job offers. In a similar way that they get money from job seekers, LinkedIn allows recruiters to post a job for free. However, the chances of that job offer being seen are quite low. Instead, recruiters can then pay for their job offer to be ‘promoted.’ The recruiter can select daily, or monthly budgets for the promotion of their job offers and opt for a pay-per-click pricing model.
The Benefits of Choosing Lensa
Lensa Offers a Far Simpler and More Focused Pricing Policy
Lensa has two revenue streams: affiliate marketers and successful job recruiters.
Lensa Is Completely Free For Job Seekers
Lensa is completely free to use for anyone looking for a new job or looking for better career prospects. Lensa does not get its money from job seekers.
Lensa Only Gets Paid When a Successful Match Is Made
The team at Lensa has confidence in their product and services. And they put their money where their mouth is. Lensa allows recruiters to post job offers and only charges them when Lensa connects them with matching candidates.
Affiliate Marketers
Lensa stays focused on its mission: to connect job seekers with suitable jobs that will further their careers. They don’t offer auxiliary services such as resume review or professional training. However, they do work in collaboration with vetted service providers in these fields. These services are promoted on the Lensa platform, and this promotion provides an additional revenue stream for Lensa (and allows them to provide a top-quality job search portal completely free of charge for job seekers).
Lensa: User Feedback
The ultimate tale of the tape comes down to user feedback. What are users saying about Lensa?
Users Qualify Lensa as ‘Great’
Admittedly, Lensa has fewer user reviews than LinkedIn (269 compared to 965), but the respective aggregate scores couldn’t be more diametrically opposed: LinkedIn is judged by its users as ‘Bad,’ while Lensa is judged by its users as ‘great.’
By perusing the many site reviews, you will find frequent mentions of the following:
- Excellent customer service (personal, friendly, and helpful)
- Excellent and relevant job matches
- Success in finding the right job
- Simple and easy to use
The reason why Lensa has earned such a positive reputation among its many users comes down to a simple formula:
- Have a singular vision – Empower people to make better career decisions – combine the latest AI technology with a team of dynamic, dedicated professionals and work tirelessly toward achieving that goal.
In a Nutshell
If you want to find a job, go to a job portal designed to accomplish exactly that (Lensa). If you want to expand your network and connect with business professionals, go to a social media platform that is designed for that purpose (LinkedIn).
It is not surprising that LinkedIn has received so many negative reviews from its users. When a platform seeks to profit off its popularity by attempting to respond to needs, it was not designed to meet, that’s where the problems start pouring in: scams, spam, and upset users.
Lensa, on the other hand, has a singular focus: match job seekers with jobs that are a good fit and that lead to a better overall career trajectory. And Lensa works very hard to accomplish just that.
If you’d like to test out Lensa, give it a shot here.
