Mark Smith
We are a job board and career website that empowers job seekers to make better career decisions by proactively using today’s tools and technologies to shape their professional destiny.
Tell us about yourself?
I co-founded Hungary’s first online job board to create the opportunities I was missing as a highly qualified job seeker navigating the beginning of my career.
Several years later, that company, Profession.hu was acquired by Sanoma Media for a record-breaking sum. Since then, I have continued my mission to fix everything that’s broken in job search.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I would advise myself to be patient and remember that I’m playing the long game. Growing a company during a pandemic takes time, but persistence and commitment to your mission will get you through.
What problem does your business solve?
We match job seekers with opportunities that fit their career goals, work style, values, and personality.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I want people to use online job search technology proactively to shape smarter careers. The job search process is broken at every step, and what’s missing is a focus on the whole person.
What is your magic sauce?
We focus on matching people with jobs that fit their big-picture goals, values, and personalities – not just the smaller or more superficial factors, which are also important, but as part of the larger story.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We will continue to grow, scale, and complete our transition from job board to a complete career navigation tool.
My journey as a founder of multiple successful job boards and recruitment startups taught me that the traditional process of searching for a job and developing a career is broken. Our approach at Lensa is different — we focus on the whole person.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
At the start of the pandemic, I had to make very difficult decisions about how to manage a job board company during a job market crisis, when businesses were being shuttered and employees were being furloughed.
That was uncomfortable and I had to ask a lot of my team, as well as take measures to keep the company alive. That strengthened my belief that ultimately, companies that create the strongest cultures are the ones that can survive and thrive during a crisis.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
They can visit Lensa.com, create a free account, upload their resume, play the Lensa Workstyle Game to allow us to match them with the best career opportunities, and begin to discover a different, more holistic way of developing their career.
