Today, Gergo Vari is a successful business leader and visionary. But his origins were not those of your typical entrepreneur. Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1977, Gergo Vari grew up in a Soviet satellite state – not exactly an environment known for fostering entrepreneurship. However, he did get a taste of entrepreneurship as a child when he would sell fruit from his grandfather’s orchard.
Since those humble beginnings, he would venture to other countries and continents and return to Hungary with lessons learned and a vision to impart.
A life of movement
At the age of 12, mere months before the complete collapse of communism in Hungary, Gergo Vari moved to New York City. A few years later, he returned to Budapest to finish high school. However, his experience moving to the US and integrating into a new country would not be his last.
After finishing high school, he moved to Canada, where he enrolled and graduated from McGill University in Montreal. While there, he obtained Canadian citizenship. He would also go on to study in Koblenz, Germany.
got his first taste of entrepreneurship as a child when he would sell fruit from his grandfather’s orchard. Since those humble beginnings, he became interested in and then passionate about technology.
Today, Gergo Vari has combined his love of founding and building companies and his love of technology and has put them to the service of job seekers and recruiters with Lensa.
The valuable discovery
In 2001, Gergo Vari worked to launch a recruitment platform in his native Hungary, Profession.hu. At the time, Profession.hu would quickly become the country’s leading recruitment platform. In 4 short years, the platform would gain nearly 75% of the market share and be subsequently purchased by Sanoma Media Budapest (a company that would later be purchased by Central Médiacsoport Zrt).
At the time, the sale of Profession.hu was the largest transaction of its kind ever recorded in Hungary, making it one of Europe’s most successful startups.
Gergo Vari would go on to found and head a variety of e-Ventures, the more notable of which include AffilateMedia, Network.hu, and the social media analysis engine Replise.
Over the course of founding and then selling these companies, he made an important discovery – one that would shape his vision for the most important venture of his career. He came to the realisation that traditional recruitment methods failed to meet the demands of the modern work environment. The hiring process was broken, and traditional tools were ill-equipped to fix it.
The creation of Lensa
When job search portals began appearing online, they were little more than platforms that mimicked traditional newspaper help wanted ads or corkboards you would see at local coffee shops. This changed nothing but merely served to promulgate an outdated and broken system.
In San Fransisco in 2016, Lensa was launched with a vision to change all that. Fueled by Gergo Vari’s passion for technology, Lensa aimed to deploy transformative AI technology and put it at the service of both job seekers and recruiters alike.
Using machine learning algorithms, the online jobs portal, Lensa, is able to analyse millions of job offers and resumes, identify patterns, and steer job seekers towards jobs they are not only likely to land but are also likely to thrive in.
In their own words: “Technology is what enables us to drive more value to our job seekers.”
How is Lensa faring today?
While its rise to prominence has not been without a few hiccups, Lensa now occupies a place among successful startups that are revolutionising how recruitment is carried out.
Today, Lensa boasts well over 20 million registered users with around 400,000 new registered members being added each month. These members submit their resumes (around 170,000 during a typical month), and they receive timely job alerts (over 85 million). And that statistic, too, is per month!
Lensa focuses exclusively on the US job market. And they have recently introduced a widget called Lensa Connect which allows website owners to list Lensa job offers on their sites and get paid for it on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.
Conclusion
The labour market in the US is currently traversing some rather troubled waters. A labour shortage combined with an unusually high quit rate and trends such as quiet quitting serves to further demonstrate how broken the hiring process has become.
Lensa is continuing to innovate and bring technological advancements to the benefit of job seekers and HR managers. Their efforts to help business professionals make data-driven decisions have not gone unnoticed. As job seekers using Lensa continue to find jobs that match with their skills, experience, work style preferences, and career goals, the future looks bright for Lensa.
This article is part of a partnership with Lensa. For partnering opportunities, contact [email protected] or [email protected].
