A non-Gaussian beam excitation scheme was introduced to a mode-dismatched pulsed thermal lens technique. The advantages of the thermal lens approach with a non-Gaussian beam excitation were described. Experiment was performed to investigate the amplitude and temporal behaviors of the thermal lens signals excited by non-Gaussian beams of different profiles, as well as their dependences on the experimental parameters. The experimental results showed that for different beam profiles, the measurement sensitivity of the thermal lens technique could be maximized by employing the near-field detection scheme and optimizing the geometric parameters (e.g., the detection distance) of the thermal lens configuration. On the other hand, the influence of these geometric parameters on the determination of thermal properties of a measured sample could be minimized by using a far-field detection scheme.