Welcome everyone. We are back with another episode and this one's gonna be a little bit different and I am very excited for it. So my guest today is Julie Callie and she is the chief marketing officer at Lensa and Lensa is a job board. Now I'm gonna preface this with saying they're not sponsoring this at all.
I got connected with them a while back to do some work with them and I... them to come on the podcast and I wanted Julie on here to talk about job boards and to talk about just the process and all of the nuances and ins and outs to hopefully help those of you out there who are applying and trying to figure out what's working, what's not, what's legitimate, what's not. So we're going to be covering a lot today, but Julie, I'm so excited that you were able to join me. Thank you, Julia.
I'm happy to be here. Yes, okay. I would love for you to do an introduction of yourself. Let us know some of your background and how you got to where you are today. Oh, that's a great question. um So yes, I'm Julie Callie, currently Chief Marketing Officer at Lensa, which is a very large job board in the United States. But I've worked in recruitment marketing uh for over 20 years.
um So what that means is that I have worked with companies to help them figure out how to hire great talent and how to advertise their jobs to reach the right people. So I've done that for over 300 companies throughout my career. some of the largest employers in the world.
So I've got to see all the different things that go on behind the scenes of how companies do hires, how they think, how they make their decisions, what kind of technology they use, and how they think about advertising and acquiring talent. So I've been in this game for a long time, seen all the things that are out there, but I really am driven every day thinking about the real people who are looking for jobs, right?
I'm trying to help companies reach them so that we can create economic opportunity for people all over the world. So I'm driven by purpose. I want to help people find joy and purpose in professional growth and that's how I came to work in recruitment marketing is I'm working directly on the source of where all this is happening uh but in the end I know that it's benefiting millions of people each day trying to get the right job for them. my gosh, I love that.
And just as an aside, because I know we talk so much about career development and how do you get where you are and all of that. And just hearing your story made me think about you're in recruiting in a different function. And I just want people to recognize that you don't always have to be in that direct thing that you think that you... like want to impact, you can use the skillset that you have in other areas. And so you're doing marketing on the recruitment side, right?
And so you have that kind of creative side and the sales side and all of that, which is very different than a front end recruiter. And so I have to point that out because I think sometimes people forget that every business has all different types of functions within it. And so you have kind of taken this purpose to help people grow in their careers and you have used your marketing skills to be able to do that and I love that.
that you're pointing that out because you know when I was young going through school and everyone's telling you what do want to be for rest of your life right never did I think I was gonna work in recruitment advertising that was not something that I thought of you know where I knew I wanted to do marketing you know I had those visions of like mad men right billboards and cool magazines right and just that's not the reality of how you apply oh the skill, that you look for real business needs.
And truthfully, you gotta try things. I tried a lot of things and I found out what I didn't wanna do. And then from there, I kept finding common threads of things that I loved and I just went after it. And to take that moment and speak to my own journey, like I am currently a chief marketing officer. How did I get there? And I fought every day getting up, but it had a lot to do with doing the kind of work you love to do.
I don't get in bed every day and be like, God, I gotta go I get out of work, got out bed and I'm happy. I know what I'm doing. I'm doing it for a reason to help people and that drives me with passion every day so it doesn't feel like work. And then that passion shows in my work and that is, I think, led to people naturally gravitating towards the work that I do because I'm always leaving it with passion.
And then if I didn't know how to do something, I just went on the internet and taught myself how to do it. And I'm of that generation as is everyone that follows. Knowledge is out there. If you need to know how to do it, go figure it out. There's a world of information and you can teach yourself skills. I love that. I love that connection to passion too, because we talk about that so much. And I think sometimes it's this very kind of ethereal thing for people. Like, what do you mean?
But sometimes it comes later. You know, you don't, I had a different passion in my twenties than I do now. And so I think we just have to be open to those experiences and the path and where it's gonna take us. So I love that we just did a little tangent. We're here to help, right? We're here to help people in their career path and purpose and to gain success. I've certainly had mine, so my only purpose now is to share and help others. love that, I love that. Well, let's talk about Lensa.
Can you give us kind of a rundown of what Lensa is in terms of a job board and what makes it different from other job boards that are out there? Yeah, it's a great question. So, Lensa is an AI-powered career platform helping people advance their careers. So, that largely consists of job search. We are a job board because companies can come and post jobs on our site. That is what classifies as a job board, a place that employers can go and post jobs. But there are also aggregators out there.
A great example of a job aggregator is Google for jobs. Companies can't go and just post a job on Google for jobs, which is why you won't see a lot of small or mid-sized companies have jobs on Google for jobs, because it's an aggregator. It only can collect information based on what's on the internet. So if a company doesn't have a great website that they, or even doesn't have a career website with their jobs on it, Google for jobs can't collect those jobs. So you might miss out on opportunity.
So job boards are great because companies can just go and post. Job aggregators are great because they collect information from all over the internet. But then to make this a little complicated or to simplify it, there are job board aggregators, like Indeed and Lensa. We go and collect jobs from all over the internet to make sure we have them all. But we also give companies the ability to post so that if they have needs, we can make sure that those are being presented to candidates.
I love that, I love that explanation because I think there are so many job boards out there and there's always that question of where are you getting this, right? Is this something that the company posted? Is it something that you're pulling from their website, like the aggregator? I think that's such an important distinction for people to understand because I know, and okay, this is my little story because it's gonna date me so much.
I remember when Monster was really big, and I know people still use Monster, but I do not recommend using it for a lot of reasons. But back in the day, probably about 12, 13 years ago, they were a big job board, but they had a lot of scams. And so we never recommended it to people. That's about when Indeed kind of became very popular. And they, guess, based on your definition, would have been a job aggregator. because all their jobs, you click apply and it went straight to the company website.
And so working with college students, I was like, hey, use Indeed because it's taking you directly to the website. You're gonna know it's not a scam, so it's a little bit easier to work through. And then Indeed shifted. I don't remember when it happened, but they shifted into allowing people to post jobs. and then it became such a bigger issue with scams because I think it just got to be so big. And now I don't recommend that anymore. what, like, how is Lensa different in that regard?
I'm guessing it's kind of that combination of the two. Yes, so we collect jobs at Lensa from all over the internet. We also partner with a lot of the other large job boards to make sure we have all the inventory and understand all the hiring demand that's out there because we do want em our job seekers, our users on Lensa to be able to have a one stop shop for all jobs, right? So we have to go get them from everywhere.
uh We process, to give you an example of this, we process over 36 million jobs a day. but there's really only 10 million unique. So that means we're picking up jobs in multiple places. And there's lot of duplication. And then we de-duplicate, right? Cause you don't want to the same job. So then we have to go collect them all, decide what's unique and then serve those up to people so that they have unique jobs that they're looking at.
But I would say this, you know, when you're working 36 million jobs, you can't look at every single one every single day and make sure that they're all. Great. uh So there are some bad actors out there. And I will speak to this because I am very passionate about this. uh There are some bad actors out there that are trying to take advantage of people who are applying to jobs because they know that when you're applying to a job, you're willing to give a lot of information.
And I cannot tolerate that. So what I would absolutely say is pay attention to where you're replying to. um At Lensa, we don't allow those types of practices. So one, we vet the partners we work with. If we're getting jobs from a source, we make sure that that's a credible source, either that we're scraping or the partner that we're getting it from. But... our partners or that site we're scraping could end up with content that's not great.
And if that happens, we absolutely ask our users to let us know. We are working on adding more features so that you can flag the job right in the experience. uh We have an email that you can send at any time, us screenshots, anything. Let us know if you see something that doesn't look right, we will go after it and take it down. We do not want our users to be misled or go through any of those bad experiences. So we look for that information, share it with us, we'll take action on it.
So couple tips I'd give is I would never, and if I ever see an employer do this, I tell them, it down. You should never, ever, ever have to put your social security number in to apply for a job. You need to provide your social security number when you're hired. And until you're hired, you should never provide that social security number to a company. So that one is a big one for me.
If you see that, you walk away from that site immediately, maybe burn your laptop because you do not want to fill that out. um Employers are working towards being able to collect as little information as they need because there should be enough on your resume. But they often will put you through, know, every hiring company is different. And some of them, you know, will ask for everything, including your first male born. process.
So I would always recommend pay attention to the URL that you're looking at. Does it look trustworthy? Look at it. Make sure it's not spoofed in their misspelling a company name or misleading you into an application process because these are really unfortunate bad actors in the space. Most of the job boards in the space will not tolerate that and will remove partners or jobs if they are aware of them. But They happen.
So please, if you see those things, advocate, because we need to make sure that we have some responsibility as job boards, that we are delivering good quality content to the people that are searching for them, and we do not want to put people in those types of situations. Right, and I wanna add to that, and we're gonna talk about resumes in a minute, but I wanna talk about resumes in terms of potential scam situations.
So on your resume, you need to be very selective about the information that you have on there in terms of you can have a phone number, have a city and state, but you do not need your full address. have your email and all of that, but do not put anything that would allow somebody to, I mean, really track you down. And it's usually the address. And this is something that I've really only been doing for probably about eight to 10 years.
I've been recommending like back in the day you did put the full address, but now with your resume all over the place and getting uploaded. and you don't know who's gonna see it, it's really just a way for you to protect yourself. So really just make sure that you're thinking about that. Yeah, I mean, this is an excellent point. I love that you're saying that. Address is not needed. Why? As a hiring manager, I've never looked at address. It doesn't matter.
uh will ask for it, but I mean, once you get to that point, I hope that you have vetted to some extent the position and all of that, so. and whether you, whatever street you lived on should not be a factor of whether or not you're qualified to hire for a job. So, you know, don't, don't be. feeling as if that's an important piece of information on there. Your skills, your work experience, those things are relevant.
Your name, and I even know that there's many companies that have software that once you apply for a job and the resume goes into the system, that information's actually blurred out or removed from the resume to prevent hiring managers from using any type of subconscious bias in hiring. Because names can cause unconscious bias. So we can't stop people from having a subconscious bias, but we can take away information that can cause that to happen.
So names are one of them, and sometimes your name is not even shown to the recruiter so that they have an unbiased view of that candidate. I wish all the ATS systems did that because, my gosh, that would take away so much in a positive way for job seekers and it would really allow them to focus just on the skills and the education and the experience that they have. I think we're headed that way with a lot, but I know there's not a lot of systems that do that.
And so I hope that's where we end up. There are some, and I can absolutely confirm companies have applied some of these methods and these policies to their hiring practices to make sure that their recruiters are not using name as uh a decision factor in whether or not this candidate is qualified. I wanna go back to scams for a second because we brought it up. I wanna make sure that we're really helping people to see those.
So you had talked about the social security number, you shouldn't be giving that out. One of the scams that I have seen a lot in my years is asking for money. And it continues, I don't know if this is still a thing, but this was a thing. When I worked on the university side with college students, there was always like one or two that managed to weasel through our systems. And they would ask students for like, hey, send me this and I'm gonna send you this.
And it was like part of the process or they would get hired. And then they would ask them to do that. And it like creates this whole situation. Anyway. Is that still a scam that we are seeing these days? Cause I want to make sure that people are aware of that. Yeah, there are still, I'd say, people out there who, bless their hearts, maybe they think that this is a genuine opportunity, right?
But uh no, let me lay some facts out of what I believe, being in this space, having looked at hundreds of millions of jobs throughout my career. First of all, you should never have to pay to apply to a job, ever. ever, ever, ever. And if there's a site that's blocking you or preventing you from accessing information to apply to a job, get on the internet and go find where you don't. Because no employer, no hiring company would ever put a pay wall in front of their ability.
That actually, I would say, questions on is it equal opportunity? If only the people can afford to apply to it, it can apply to it. But it's not, right? And we have laws in this country called equal opportunity in America. So you cannot really put up a wall in front of an appla. So that's not a thing. Are there sites that charge for providing you some type of service, right, to deliver you jobs and add extra features and create like a special club of candidate types?
Yes, there are sites that are out there, but they are have the same jobs everybody else has. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. really have to evaluate are you paying for the service because you shouldn't be paying to apply. So that's just talking about being able to apply to the job and then you might apply. There are certainly bad actors out there who say, okay, great. you're hired, but you have to spend $50 to get your starter kit.
You have to spend $150 or I've even seen people say, you have to pay for your own background check. You have to pay for your drug testing. um No, no, these are all the responsibilities of the hiring company. So if a company requires a background check or a drug test or some kind of screening or some kind of personal equipment, that you have to have to work on the job is the responsibility of the employer. You should not have to invest in a hiring opportunity.
Yes. different if it's a 1099, that's a contract. Now you're an independent worker. Now you are responsible for all of those things, but that's a 1099. So great way to ask, is this a full-time job? And if they say, well, it's a 1099, it's a contract position, well, that's a very different type of job. Right, right, okay, oh my gosh. There's so much nuance to this everybody. But we're getting through it, because I think this is so important. We don't necessarily dig into these differences, right?
So I wanna ask, know, Lensa is that job board, you can apply through it. What is the difference between going through Lensa or going directly to a company, you know? career site. Is there a difference there? Is there a benefit to one over the other? great question. So I would say, you know, speaking to a large and general audience about job search, job boards are the definitely the place you want to start search. You cannot go visit every company website to see what jobs are, don't do that.
That's not even feasible. The whole point of a job board is that they have all the jobs already. So. You want to pick which job boards you want to utilize, right? You want to make sure they're trusted sites. You want to make sure they have good um features for you. want to make sure they aggregate enough jobs that are relevant for you. Now, once you're using that job board, you want to take advantage of what the job board can do for you with that.
Like, so for at Lensa, it's not just that we're going to show you the job and like send you to the job, right? You're going to see the job that you want. and then there's an entire experience that's gonna support you. Okay, let's see how much your resume matches to this job before you apply. Mmm. some tips that you can do to change your resume before you apply. So we're uh providing resources for you to have the best success in that application inside our interface.
Once you go to the employer's site and you apply, the employer's not trying to coach you through how to get through their application process. They're... trying to present you with all the information needed to learn about them as an employer and to complete the process. But who's taking care of you?
Yeah, okay, okay, we gotta stop on this one because this came up in another interview that I did and she's more of a frontline recruiter and she was talking about how, look, like you have to be qualified for the position. You cannot be out here just applying to everything under the sun. This has come up in a couple of interviews already. And so this type of feature, and again, I'm not being sponsored to say this, okay? I'm just telling you as somebody. that does this a lot.
That type of feature is so helpful for job seekers because it's going to allow you to look at the position and go, should I apply for this? Because maybe I don't have enough experience to do this. Or maybe it jogs your memory of skills that you have that you forgot about, which is also very helpful in this process. So already I love that Linza has that feature to help job seekers really look at a position critically versus just applying out to tons and tons of positions.
Great, so we want companies to be successful with their hiring, and they're gonna need quality talent to do that. We want people to get hired at jobs, and they're going to need to have a quality uh experience to getting to that, right? So we're trying to bridge the gap of those two things. So in that, candidates... have a journey they have to go through. Now what... where this becomes probably a big pain that I know many people feel is that every company is unique. They have their own website.
They have their own technology, their own recruitment process. Everything is unique. So when you work with a job board, the job board standardizes the experience that you have, the look, the feel, the way you interact with it, use it, you register, they have all of the information. And sometimes they offer easy apply, which is great. If you're working on a board and you easy apply, take advantage of that, because it's so great for you to just click a button, right?
But. Then when you're off to the employer's site, it's the Wild West. You'll never know what experience you're gonna have. You never know what ATS you're gonna end up on. I bet if you're a candidate supplied for a lot of jobs, you got ones you love more than others. oh Yep. makes me laugh when somebody is like not in the industry and they come up to me and they're like, oh, I hate this ATS. And I'm like, I don't even know what an ATS is.
So it's because you would come into contact with all this different technology. And that's where I know a lot of frustration happens is that job boards really are trying to support the job seeker and the experience that they're having getting to apply to those jobs. But a lot of those experiences exist on the wild west. of technology and workflows that are designed by each individual company. Okay, so let's dig into that a little bit more.
Can you tell me more about the relationship of the job board, Lensa, to an ATS? Like, are they talking to each other so that you don't have to register for every single ATS system that's out there? um Is that some of that benefit going through a job? So in some cases, yes, there are job boards, typically the ones that are larger, more reputable, well known, create uh partnerships with ATSs.
And this is where you can end up with those opportunities to click one button and you've applied to a direct employer. This is where you see a lot of really easy tech making those things flow. And that's great when those partnerships exist. I forget the last cow, I think there's over 500 ATSs currently and there's over 25,000 job boards. So if you did that, think about how many meetings that would need to take place for everybody to work together and make all this fluid. hard.
So what I know is that we continue to drive towards using technology and creating more standardization. We've standardized jobs pretty well, but we haven't standardized applications. So if we can get to a better standardized place, I would love that but the emergence of AI has definitely thrown a little bit of a curveball into these things because it's on both sides um and now everyone's trying to adapt to that change before standardization.
Yeah, okay, we're gonna come back to AI because I know that is also a hot topic and I definitely have some questions when it comes to job boards. Before we get there though, one of the things I'm trying to do this season is really help uh listeners figure out tips and tricks around the hiring process. Obviously we're talking about job boards, but I wanna talk about resumes. I wanna talk about like, what are the tips that you have for job seekers that are using job boards to apply?
Because I know that a lot of career coaches are like, tailor for every single position. I used to be in that camp. I'm not in that camp anymore. I'm more in, have a resume for the function or the type of job that you want, but I don't think you need to fully tailor for every position.
So when you're working with a job board and you might be looking at a lot of different types of positions, what are some of the tips or maybe what have you even heard from employers that they really feel like is missing on the resume side? uh You always want what I would call your master file, right? You're one that's your generalized, covers everything, it's got everything on it. That's the one you use at your primary.
uh There is value in having additional resumes that maybe if you want to lead with more of an experience in one place or in another, certainly some job boards have the ability to store multiple. uh multiple files so that you can use whichever one you want to apply. whether it's the direct employer or the job board, there's usually one primary that becomes the one that's searchable, matchable, indexable. So that one you want good and full. Good and full. Don't leave stuff off that one.
Keep that one. Like, yeah, my God, it's horrible to read. It's five pages long. Who cares? Truth is, the recruiter's not the one reading it first. The tech is. so we don't care about length in those scenarios. It's really about having as much information as possible so that it matches you with positions. it can read through all the information, right? And if you leave something out, then it's not there. Then the tech is the first thing going through it, truthfully.
In most cases, it's not a recruiter that's gonna read your resume first, especially in large organizations or through large job boards. There's probably some kind of tech scanning it first to say, this job requires 10 years of sales experience. Do you have 10 years of working experience? And if you don't, then you're not gonna acquire or qualify for 10 years. And that would never be presented to the recruiter because it doesn't meet the basic qualifications, right?
this is so important because again, this is another topic that's come up in almost every conversation that I've had. And I see a lot of people who are like, a recruiter's not even seeing my resume because I'm getting auto rejected and all this stuff. And I'm like, you don't have the qualifications for the position. And the recruiter has put in qualifications and things to weed people out.
And that's why when we talk about the job search, I'm like, this whole, you know, apply for so many jobs and, you know, cross your fingers and pray, like, that ain't it because you are gonna see that rejection because you're not qualified for the position and it's kicking you out. Right. So I'd love to add some perspective to this because I mean, I hear this and I see it and I feel it and I feel the pain and I cry for people every day, right? I applied to a hundred jobs. I'll never hurt back.
The recruiter received 500 resumes today for one job and not a single one of them is qualified. So like, I understand the frustration of like, I didn't hear back, but like, what is reasonable? Like, if they got maybe 10 or 15 resumes that were unqualified, I probably would say, yes, make sure there's respond to those people. But 500, it's not humanly possible. So then what you have is tech that's auto rejecting. So you're getting generic rejections based on did not qualify.
And that's reading off a resume. And I know that that is one of the most painful places that people are hurt. Well, why? Why? You ask yourself the question, what about me and my resume made it so that nobody would even look at it? I just got auto rejected. Which is why we created that resume scoring feature at Lensa so that people could upload their resume first and say, how do you match? Give you a sense of like, are you? a good fit for this or not, you're missing stuff.
Now, if you have it, fix it. We're not encouraging people to lie on their resumes. We're telling you, here's what you're missing. This might be why this is a good fit for you. and by the way, here's six other jobs that might be better for you because they match with you. So that is something that we're constantly trying to improve the results on through the experience of the user. But the impact you feel is when you apply and you don't match, the rejection comes back.
Um. And I'll say, I wanna add to this because this is a little unique to this current job market. This is not the job market to do a major change in, in my personal opinion. Unless you have a connection or somebody is like tapping you for something. If you're like blind applying, cold applying to things, this isn't where I would take big leaps. because I feel like for certain functions, it's too saturated and you're not gonna make it through for those.
Unless again, unless you have some type of connection, you know somebody in the company, this is not the market. Like you need to be doing more of a one-for-one lateral or a very natural progression within the experiences that you already have. And I wouldn't say that all the time, that's just what's happening right now and what I'm seeing. you? Do you feel like you're seeing something similar? um I think your advice is right on that because we are, you we went through the big quit.
feel and I think some of the big stay right now. Mm-hmm. companies are being very conservative with hiring at this moment. I would not say that job market is in threat or anything of that nature. It's still very healthy. We still got over 10 million jobs out there today in the United States that are looking to make hires as quickly as possible. uh So there's still a very hot job market, but it's cooled a little bit. So companies are not just grabbing talent and we'll cultivate them here.
They're looking for evidence that companies or that the candidate actually has the skill, has the experience, is relevant. They want direct connections. You might be able to connect the dots of why you think this works for what they want, but if they can't see it directly and obviously, they may be moving along, looking for someone who does. So if you have a story about how these things connect, you gotta get off the resume and find another way to tell that story. Video.
call them, leave voicemail messages, My biggest advice would be to people who are trying to get through all the noise of this space is that we live in a world that is heavily integrated with technology. And that is also in the recruitment process. And that is something that you're butting up against as you're applying for jobs, you're being processed through technology. So in a highly technical and automated world, How do you stand out? Be a human. Be a human! Make a human connection!
Do things humans do. They call. They show up. They write a letter. Oh my god. I got a postcard from someone the other day. You wanna know the last time I got a postcard? I love that. I get postcards sometimes from clients and it is the best. I can tell you, I got 75 candidates reach out to me about a job that I am not even the hiring manager for today. And I just pushed them all to the side because I cannot respond to everyone, especially when it's not even my hiring.
then I look at this postcard. And you bet I went on LinkedIn and I found that person and I sent them a nice message. Why? Because it stood out. So I share that story because that is a significant truth of like me, I'm an executive, I'm also a hiring manager. Look at my inbox, it's overloaded, it's crowded, it's noise. Do something different, do something special, be a real human. Right, right.
Well, and I think too, even with that, you you said it earlier, some of these recruiters are getting 500 applications, your message isn't always gonna get answered either. And so when we talk about, you know, applying to hundreds and thousands sometimes jobs, I'm like, y'all, that, you know, application to rejection ratio becomes very high.
So I think it's so great that your system allows them to really take that second look and then you can target and you can be a little bit more intentional around finding somebody at the company, whether it's that direct hiring manager, recruiter, or even just somebody in the department to connect to and be genuine about that connection, not slimy about it. yes, you still need to follow the processes to get into the system, but then you can stand out by being a real human.
And recruiters are looking for real human connection. So really stands out. Okay. I think this is a perfect time to talk about AI. We're talking about really human. So, okay. So I know that part of Lensa is run by AI. talked about that a little bit, but what are you seeing in terms of AI impacting hiring and impacting job boards? Great, yeah, so we use AI throughout uh our experiences that we provide from cover letter, supporting cover letter writing to scoring your resume against jobs.
Like we're using AI through all of the things, right? Employers are also using AI in all different creative ways and that's evolving every day. uh Why we're seeing that job seekers are using AI too, right? AI, now I would say there are products out there that are built AI technologies that allow candidates to go and use these things. Many of them are paid. Most of them are paid services at this time where you can pay to have your resume.
Then AI will go out and apply for it all over the internet. So that's happening. That is real. So we are seeing a lot of applications come in on jobs from AI, so an AI agent. So how, okay, okay. Cause I've seen this, I've seen this, I have a client, don't think they're using an AI, but they're doing something. But I know that that exists. I know programs like that exist. I personally don't recommend it for my clients just because of where they are in their career.
But what are you seeing with that? Like what is the downside or maybe even the positive of using an AI agent like that? There, I'll go through the good and bad of this and I'm both sides of the house. Okay, good. Good for the job seeker. Great. Put your resume in one place, blast the whole internet with your resume. Great. Great for you, right? You're playing a numbers game now. Right? You're just trying to hit everything that you can.
And while they will say relevancy and will present you best, I talked earlier about how every ATS and every employer has a different process, different thing. So you cannot trust that the AI is going to represent you in your best self in every system, in every, it's just at this time, that is not a realistic expectation of that type of technology. So you're best off representing yourself as yourself. So I would recommend that.
your better chance of success through that application is by you directly applying. But the AI is there and it's there for a reason because it can make your life easy. So great! But the consequence of that is that recruiters already have a lot of... unqualified applicants that they had to manage through to get to the quality talent to hire. Well, this just made it worse. So recruiters are ready to rip their hair out because all of a sudden AI turned on them.
And I know some people are probably applauding like, hey, finally, but this is working both sides, right? So now... employers are seeing an influx of resumes that are completely unqualified, making a lot more noise. So making it again harder on the recruiter to identify the authentic Skilled and relevant talent for a job. They have a tough job to go through They're typically recruiters are not hiring for just one break.
They're usually hiring for multiple jobs They got multiple positions that they're interviewing for they got pipelines hundreds of people they're trying to manage it's not an easy job ah but The recruiter is your connection, your real human connection to the organization. So those relationships matter. When you have an opportunity to connect with one, remember that person is working hard at their job and be empathetic to that. Yes, yes.
I wanna add to that too because while my primary business is not editing resumes, I will sometimes for my clients if they need it. And I can tell you, I know if you have used AI to write your resume, I know if you've used AI to write your cover letter, unless you're using one of the systems that you're talking about. that's usually, you you have to pay for it because it has the right parameters in there to write a well-crafted cover letter.
And I don't know how to explain it to people, but it's a combination of, I've read a lot of resumes, I've written a lot of resumes, and I also work with AI. And so it's the same where I can tell if your resume has been written by a resume writer, like somebody that has one of those resume writing. badges or like programs that they went through, no hate to those people, but I can tell if they have done that because there's a style and there's a way. It's the same way with AI.
And I can guarantee you having talked to a lot of recruiters, they see it because y'all are putting these things, you you're putting all your information into AI and then you're not really taking the time to train it to sound like you. or to train it to have some kind of specific way that you want to present yourself or your information. And so it sounds very generic and it's not customized. And so I just, want people to hear that, cause I love AI. I think it's great.
I think there's a lot of benefit to it. I think it saves time for the job seeker and I think it's amazing, but you have to really put some work into it. to make sure that it still sounds like you and it's still getting across what you need to get across in your resume and your cover letter. I love what you said there. I tell people a of time AI is not a what, it's a how, right? Like how are you gonna get your next job? AI? No, because AI is not the what. It's how.
I'm going to get my next job by presenting my personal brand and my skillset in its best light and I'm going to use AI to do that. AI is not the answer, it is just a tool. And it and yeah, everyone's using it now, right? Oh, give it a try. Don't be afraid. Do some fun stuff with it. ah First, get comfortable with it and then try to bring it into your professional life. But don't be shy and it really you got to be more personal, create your own personal brand into it.
I can do a whole session talking just about that. my gosh, I know that's a different episode. I will say, and this is gonna be a shameless plug for me, but I have a resume guide that walks you through how to write your resume start to finish as well as the cover letter and gives you structures for that. So what I have actually encouraged my clients to do is take that structure that I recommend and put that into the prompt.
Like, hey, here's the structure, here's the tone, here's what I want this to look like. And then give it your content and have it customized from there along with the job. uh The job. What am I trying to say? uh want the job, the company information. It sounds like your resume guide is filled with like prompts and how to set your personalization up to that because it's you, the company and the job. Those things are going to come together and be a unique thing. Yes, yeah.
And so I think that's different, know, when you're giving it parameters, when you're giving it information versus just saying, here's my resume, can you make this better? Or can you match my resume to this job, job description is the word I was looking for a minute ago, job description. You know, can you match these? Well, probably, yeah, it can, but is it actually going to... match you authentically, is that who you are? Do you actually have that experience?
Because like we said earlier, lying is not the way because you're gonna get found out at some point. So, and I know there are people out there that say like, just lie for the job. I do not recommend that. That takes into account your integrity. And at some point somebody is gonna figure it out and you're gonna get fired. So I don't recommend that. And so that's another thing that you have to be careful with.
using AI is it's either gonna use the information you give it or it's going to make something up. AI hallucinations. ah Yes, fill in the blanks if it doesn't now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, oh, so much. We could spend so much time on AI alone. But I wanna go back to a couple other things, because I know we're focusing a little bit more on job boards, but what about things like interviewing?
Like, that something that, you I don't know if Lensa has resources for that, or is there a way to utilize job boards to help with interviewing? Great question. Once you have applied for a job, right, job boards are gonna do everything to help you become aware of a hiring company, aware of a job, help you, you know, explore your interest in it. They're gonna do everything they can to support it. Once you've applied, The job board really no longer is supporting all the things that come next.
That's no longer recruitment marketing. It's now recruiting. Right now you have the pipeline of talent and you need to recruit in that talent. And in that process, what we typically view in our industry is like, it goes from application to screen. to interview to hire. Now a company may have many layers that they put in between. There might be 10 interviews. There might be like six screenings. Who knows, right?
Every company's different, but generally it's believed there's some type of screening. There's an interview process and then there's a hire. So we try to support our candidates through the journey and give them resources and tools at Lensa to support the things that are gonna happen when we're not there. Hmm. great example of that is interview. So if you are in the interface, you can apply to a job, doing all the resume scoring, cover letter writing, all those things are in the interface.
And then if you get that interview, it can help you practice for that interview. So it will look at the job, it'll look at the company. It may even pull off of information of uh resumes of people who previously worked at that company and then cultivate screening questions for you on. this job and and they're really catered to like take me with some of the good stuff that prove your knowledge and skill and experience.
So these are the good ones not the fluff not the like how many pennies does it take to stack to the top of the empire? None of that stuff like you you say that you're you know an experienced sales leader. Here's the questions are going to go with that type of job from this type of company. So Why not use that? It takes all that, like, you you go in an interview and you're full of that, like, what are they gonna ask me? Do I feel prepared? You should not have those feelings.
You should be feeling confident and prepared enough that you know all the things that you've done in your experience. It all comes to, like, the fear of, what will they ask me? So if you beat up in a practice with that, before you go, you're gonna walk into that interview way more confident. So we do provide, call it an AI simulated interview, right? It's through chat, but it's giving you very specific questions for that job based on your resume, Hmm, that's amazing. That's so good.
That's so helpful. And I know a lot of job boards don't offer that. There are separate systems that you usually have to pay for and all of that, um but that's so great. Again, kind of walking everybody through the full experience, not just stopping at the application. I love that. Yes, and all of these things that I'm talking about at Lenso that we provide for job seekers are free. There's no catch, right? In this industry, it is generally been the way. You don't charge candidates.
You don't charge people and talent to apply to jobs. You don't create those barriers. So you shouldn't be paying for a job board. You might pay for additional services, but in truth, a lot of them are out there. So let's have the resume scoring and the interview simulator, all that stuff is free and provided to any user that registers. um So how can job boards afford to like give all this stuff away for free? Right?
I think that that's a very important thing for people to understand about job boards because how do job boards make money? Right? Because they're not charging the candidate. So they charge the employer, right? So companies have to pay to advertise their jobs. But well, Does that mean you only see the jobs that people pay for? No. That's why job aggregators matter, because job aggregators will serve you all relevant jobs to your search, but they might put the ones that pay at the top of the list.
So that is something... um to understand on like, how come job boards are giving me all this stuff for free? What's the catch? Well, the money comes from the other side. So I just thought I'd share that because I know it's a common question. They're like, wait a minute, what's the catch? How come all this stuff's free for me? And why would a job board give all that stuff away for free? Why does Lenson do that?
Because if we have a large audience that we're providing value to that are searching for jobs and we can support them through their journey, then they will come to us to find all of those jobs and employers know that. So then employers will advertise with us. So that's how that works in the space, in the industry. And that's how we keep it all free for job seekers. I love that, that's so good. And I think this is so important as job seekers are evaluating which job boards to use.
This is one of the things to think about and consider. I think also, and again, like you guys are not sponsoring me to have you on or anything like that. Like there are other boards that I use as well, but that is also something to consider when you are out there, you know, looking at advice, you know. whether it's listening to somebody like me, other career coaches, other recruiters, some of them have brand deals with job boards to speak about that job board and to speak positively about it.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, you know, I think that's great for them, but you also have to recognize like who is being paid by companies to endorse some of these job boards. And a lot of those job boards do have a pay feature that those people also then get a cut of. Again. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you as a job seeker need to understand where you're getting your information from and why those people are telling you what they're telling you.
And a lot of times somebody is paying them to do that. So just be weary of that as you are out there looking at all of these different resources. Yes, and I'd say too in job boards, uh there are so many, right? I can't speak for every single one and it's specifics. I can certainly speak for Lensa, uh but. Job boards have to find a way to pay for all this data, all this processing, all these millions of interactions and create these quality experiences.
So in order to do all that, they certainly are looking for ways to create their own revenue. So when you go to a job board, you might see ads, you might see offers or things that they're putting in the experience that... First of all, you wanna make sure they're career relevant, right? You don't wanna be seeing weird stuff. If you start seeing really off-color stuff, maybe you should think twice about what you're using there. But, uh...
If they're presenting other relevant offers and advertising to things that might support you, that's how they're trying to keep it free for you. So I know a lot of people are saying that sometimes they're like, I don't want any experience, any of that. want perfect clean. Well, that's when you start to pay for a job board. Because if they're not making money off the employer and advertising, then they're going to charge the job seeker.
So there are certainly sites that will charge the job seeker, remove all ads off. all things and but now you're fronting the costume. So that's really the two models. So if you see ads and you don't want to interact with them then don't interact with them. But they're up there because that's how they're keeping it free. Yeah, yeah. my gosh. Julie, this has been so much amazing information. And I'll be honest, there's so much more I wanna ask, but I wanna be respectful of everybody's time.
I feel like we could go on for another hour and talk about so many other things related to job boards and the hiring process. But I would love for you to kind of wrap this up and let us know. What is something that you think job seekers should be doing, but they aren't? ah I don't think job seekers are fully utilizing all the benefits that job boards can provide now. ah I know, I see the user behavior data. Many people come and they just search for a job and then they give up. They're gone.
And maybe they'll come back two days, three days later and they'll search for a job and they're gone. What you're missing out on is all the amazing tools that job boards are creating to try to make a better experience for you. And I would say, look and shop around, find which ones you wanna work for. I certainly recommend Lensa. When you register, you're gonna get a completely different type of experience than just what and where, search and go, right? Like that has so.
So 2008. Register with the job board and you're gonna see something very different because once you registered, they have more information and they can deliver for you. I'd also say job alerts, big thing. People are on or off. There is a wide category of preferences that you could adjust. And what I often hear from people is that, oh God, I just get job alerts every day so I shut them off. You can adjust them to be once a week. You can convert them to SMS if you don't like email.
You can get push notifications. You can have them set up so you get one a day. One every six hours, one every six days. You have the ability to adjust these things, but most people just go and turn it on, turn it off. Go look at what the features are to manage your job alerts because most job boards can adjust those things for you. It's not just on and off. I love that, I love that. Julie, thank you so much. I so appreciate you being here, sharing all of this wonderful information.
I hope that this really helps job seekers and professionals out there understand how to use job boards and definitely the benefits of using them and using all the different resources. Again, thank you so much. thank you so much. I'm happy to be here and happy to help. Thank you so much.