AT A GLANCE ASK lets you ask questions about jobs, skills, occupations, companies, industries, and regions in everyday language.
What is ASK?
ASK is a conversational AI assistant that helps users more quickly access, understand, and apply the labor market data available in Analyst by asking questions in natural language. It uses the Lightcast data and reports available to your Analyst account to guide you toward relevant insights, explain results, and support follow-up questions.
You can explore topics such as occupational demand, emerging skills, hiring trends, talent supply, workforce demographics, industry growth, company activity, and more.
It is designed to complement the existing Analyst experience. You can still use traditional reports and workflows whenever you prefer or when you need deeper exploration.
Key Benefits
ASK helps you:
Get to answers faster. Move from a business question to relevant labor market insights without spending as much time navigating reports and configuring an analysis.
Turn complex data into clear insights. Translate labor market information into understandable findings that are easier to communicate and use.
Understand results. Get a plain-language explanation of a metric, trend, table, or chart.
Validate insights with supporting evidence. Review the Lightcast reports, sources, and applied inputs used to support an answer, making it easier to verify findings and continue the analysis.
Keep the analysis moving. Refine questions, explore new angles, and build on previous responses within one continuous conversation.
How to Use ASK
Open ASK. Access ASK from the input on the Analyst homepage or select ASK from the side navigation panel.
Ask your question. Type a question in natural language, or choose a suggested prompt for inspiration.
Review the answer. Depending on your question and available data, ASK may provide a summary, explanation, list, table, chart, or link to a relevant Analyst report.
Continue the conversation. Ask follow-up questions, refine your request, or explore a related topic without restating the original context.
Share feedback. Use the thumbs-up or thumbs-down option to indicate whether the response was helpful.
Tips for Better Results
For a more focused response, build your question using this formula:
Topic + Location + Time frame + Decision or goal
Be specific about the topic. Name the occupation, skill, company, industry, or type of worker you want to explore.
Include the location. Add a nation, state, metropolitan area, or other region when geography matters.
Add a time frame. Say whether you want the latest available data, the past year, or a longer trend.
Describe the decision. Explain what you are trying to understand or decide so the response can be more useful.
Refine with follow-ups. If the first answer is broad, ask for a comparison, explanation, or narrower view.
Example: “How has demand for software developers changed in the Dallas metropolitan area over the past three years, and which skills should we prioritize in our training program?”
Understanding Your Response
Answers and supporting sources
ASK is designed to make results easier to understand while keeping the supporting Analyst experience within reach.
Responses may vary. The format depends on your question, the data available, and the reports your account can access.
Sources appear when applicable. A SOURCES section may appear at the bottom of the response with links to the Analyst reports used and the inputs applied.
Report links preserve context. When you open a linked report, the report opens with the listed inputs applied, so you can continue exploring the same question.
Explanations may include uncertainty. ASK may tell you when information is limited, when no results are available, or when it needs clarification.
💡AI-generated responses can be incomplete or incorrect. Review the supporting sources and use professional judgment before relying on a response for an important decision.
Conversations and follow-up questions
ASK can use the context of the current conversation, which lets you ask natural follow-up questions. Conversation-management options may allow you to return to prior work, find a conversation, rename it, mark it as a favorite, or remove it from your view.
Managing your conversations
ASK saves your conversations so you can return to previous analysis and continue where you left off. Use the conversation history panel to view and manage saved conversations.
From the conversation history, you can:
Open a previous conversation. Select a conversation to review its responses or continue asking related questions.
Search your conversations. Enter keywords to find conversations related to a specific question or topic.
Pin a conversation. Pin your important conversations as favorites so they are easier to find later.
Rename a conversation. Give a conversation a more descriptive name that reflects its topic or purpose.
Delete a conversation. Remove a conversation from your conversation history.
Start a new conversation. Select New Chat to return to the ASK starting page and ask a new question.
⚠️ Deleting a conversation removes it from your history view but does not delete the conversation from the database.
Customize Your ASK Responses
ASK Settings allow you to adjust how responses are written, organized, and framed for your work. You can change these preferences at any time in the ASK tab in the Analyst settings.
Response Length
Choose how much detail you want ASK to provide:
Default: Uses ASK’s standard response length.
Concise: Provides a shorter response focused on the most important findings.
Detailed: Provides additional explanation, context, and supporting information.
Formatting
Choose how you prefer information to be presented:
Default: Uses ASK’s standard response format.
Prose: Presents the response primarily in paragraphs.
Bullets: Organize information into scannable bullet points.
Tables and charts: Prioritize tables and visualizations when they are appropriate for the question and supported by the available data.
Selecting Tables and charts does not guarantee that every response will contain a visualization. ASK will use a table or chart when it can communicate the results clearly and accurately.
Persona
Choose the perspective that most closely reflects your work. ASK will use the selected persona to emphasize the context, terminology, and potential applications most relevant to that audience.
Default: Provides a general labor-market analysis without emphasizing a particular audience.
Enterprise Talent: Frames responses for talent acquisition, workforce planning, competitive talent analysis, and employer decision-making.
Public Sector: Frames responses for economic development, workforce development, public policy, and regional planning.
Higher Education: Frames responses for academic program planning, curriculum alignment, student outcomes, and regional workforce needs.
For more information about ASK's technology, data use, and privacy, read the ASK FAQ.