From hiring billboards to lighting up your house with Christmas lights, the internet is brimming with tales of inventive job seekers that have turned finding work into an art form. Here we take a look at a few job seeking stunts from recent years that have got media attention – and in plenty of cases a firm offer of work.
The résumé chocolate bar
This was the advice given by Shelly Field’s in her 2009 book, Career Coach: Managing Your Career in the Computer Industry. If you scoffed at the idea you obviously haven’t heard about the chocolate résumé bar that went viral in 2013 after it was posted on Reddit. While details were largely scare, it was revealed the chocolate bar was a Crunch and the candidate was successful.
Inspired to try a similar stunt? Unless you want your resume to taste of imitation you may have to go a step further and chisel your experience and skills directly onto the chocolate itself.
A prime candidate
While Philippe Dubost may currently be sold out you can still see the Amazon-style product page he created in 2013 to showcase his skills at http://phildub.com/. The Amaz-ing resume has all the hallmarks of a real Amazon page, with suggestions for frequently bought items, product details (‘This item is available for shipping anywhere in the world!’) and 5-star reviews. After more than 1.5 million views of the site, Birchbox.com eventually added Dubost to their shopping cart.
Josh Butler meanwhile actually posted himself on the real eBay for £16,000 in November 2011, with John Lewis taking advantage of the ‘Buy it now’ offer in time for Christmas.
Billboards not job boards
Adam Pacitti started 2013 by spending his last £500 (well, £530 plus VAT, but that ‘didn’t sound catchy enough’) on a billboard asking for a job. The stunt attracted a bucket load of media attention, but more importantly around 60 job offers (he eventually accepted one from a digital agency).
18 months before Pacitti, ‘Jobless Paddy’ Féilim Mac An Iomaire took out a €2,000 (£1,770) billboard ad in Dublin, asking his countrymen to save him from having to leave the Emerald Isle. The gamble paid off, as Paddy Power (who aren’t shy of a bit of publicity themselves) decided to take up his offer and save him from emigration.
Job hunting is a literal journey
Emma Clifford’s idea to advertise on the seats of London taxi cabs in August 2013 was inspired by the London Book Fair, where she was told graduates needed to think of inventive ways to stand out from the crowd. Perhaps she didn’t pay her fare, but there doesn’t seem to be any news online on whether the idea got her very far…
The Google job experiment
You don’t need to spend hundreds of pounds advertising your services to get a job – Alec Brownstein got one in 2010 for just $6 by bidding on the paid results of Google searches. Brownstein targeted the names of five advertising directors he admired so that when they Googled themselves they would see a job advert pointing to his personal website alecbrownstein.com. The copywriter investment landed him four conversations, two offers, and a full time position at Young & Rubicam in New York.
Another jobseeker that turned to Google to set himself apart was Eric Gandhi. The designer craved a job at Google, so created a resume that looked like a search result asking ‘Did you mean: Eric Gandhi?’ with the search query ‘Creative+Hard-Working+Talented+Excellent Designer+Unique+Autodidactic+’. Gandhi got a job offer from Google, but it wasn’t the right position for him, and he went on to work for that well known Google alternative The, err, Weather Channel.
Gandhi recognises that not every industry would appreciate such a creative application however: “I wouldn’t necessarily apply for, say, a position in finance with a résumé like that.”
Fake your way to the top?
In 2010 The Chive reported on a girl who had quit her job by sending a series of images around the office essentially calling out her bad tempered boss and saying that while she didn’t have another job lined up she’d be just fine.
The story went viral as disgruntled workers across the world dreamed of being in Jenny’s shoes. Except Jenny was actually Elyse Porterfield and the whole thing was a hoax. That didn’t stop the young actress reportedly getting a few job offers however.
Christmas lights
If you thought standing out was just for job-seekers in their 20s think again. All Liz Hickok wanted for Christmas was an HR job – so in 2011 she spelt it out in Christmas lights in “an attempt to show my fun and creative side to problem solving”. As well as an offer for a job in Italy, several local companies saw the light and invited her for interviews, although her LinkedIn profile suggests she didn’t find the right job until December 2012.
