You’ve got yourself a good degree, you’ve spent your summers completing unpaid work experience at relevant companies in the industry and you’ve spent hours polishing off your CV. Finding a job should be a piece of cake right?
If only it were that easy. With such a high volume of graduates, comes a lot of competition and standing out from the crowd sometimes feels like an impossible task. Sometimes you have to go the extra mile to get yourself noticed amongst the other applicants and by injecting a bit of creativity and inventiveness into your job search, you may just demonstrate the initiative that employers are looking for.
These young graduates knew that they were going to have to step up their game to land their dream jobs. Maybe you can seek some inspiration.
1. Build a Billboard:
Media Production graduate Adam Pacitti’s campaign to find employment, caused quite a stir across the UK back in 2013, when he proved he would stop at nothing to land his dream job. He kickstarted his ‘Employ Adam’ campaign by building himself a promotional website, where he exhibited a video resume showing off his production skills, amongst other information about himself. The thing that really made him stand out from the crowd however, was the huge “employ Adam” billboard that rented, reading “I spent my last £500 on this billboard. Please give me a job.” His campaign rapidly went viral and his job hunt featured on radio stations, TV shows and newspapers around the world. He soon landed himself a job at the award winning digital agency Sea Change, which was one of a huge 60 job offers that he received as a result of the campaign.
2. Become a walking advert:
Adam may have sought inspiration for his billboard from history graduate David Rowe who took a similar approach in his job hunt back in 2009, with a stunt involving a promotional sandwich board.
David turned himself into a walking advert, as he roamed the streets of London, dressed in a smart suit and carrying a billboard printed with the words “Job Wanted.” He even offered to work the first month for free as a trial period for the employer before hiring him.
Just hours after his outing in the sandwich board, David struck lucky and was offered a job at the international recruitment firm Parkhouse Bell after catching their attention with his “out of the box thinking”
3. Boost your career with home-brewed beer:
One aspiring graphic designer from Canada knew he had to think of a creative plan to stand out in such a competitive industry and what better way to get the job offers pouring in than with a few cold ones? Brennon Gleason had the idea of creating a “resum-ale”, which consisted of sending beer that he had brewed himself to his target companies, labelled with samples from his portfolio and QR codes to his online resume. He felt that it would help him to stand out, as well as giving employers an idea of who he is and what he enjoys doing in his free time.
He received a few offers in response to the resum-ales and decided to accept a job at Techtone as the digital marketing agency’s creative director.
4. Bake your way into the boss’s good books:
Katie Oldham was in her second year of her Mass Communications degree when she was lucky enough to land herself an internship at her favourite magazine Cosmopolitan. She knew that she was going to have to think up a way of standing out from the crowd and rather than risking going unnoticed amongst the hundreds of other paper applications, Katie decided to take a more innovative approach. She had eight unique cupcakes made that were decorated with an edible QR code that linked to her online CV and explained why she would make the perfect intern.
Well it certainly worked, as Katie was personally thanked by the editor on Twitter and was offered the internship the following summer. The Cosmo team were so impressed, they even posted photographs on their official Twitter account.
5. Move higher with a CV on a flyer:
Alfred Ajani who graduated from Coventry University with a degree in Marketing was having a tough time finding a job after leaving University last Summer, so after coming to the realisation that he needed to do something that would set him out from the pack, he headed down to Waterloo station equipped with a stack of CVs to distribute. Suited and booted, he displayed a sign that informed passers by of his Marketing qualification and invited them to ask him for a CV if they happen to be interested. He managed to catch the attention of recruitment company Asoria Group with this technique and they later offered him a job through LinkedIn.
Five months on, the tables have turned and Alfred is now doing the hiring himself, so it looks like the stunt worked out for him!
