The job market is competitive, and selling yourself to the potential employer the right way is the key. And when you have thousands of people vying for a coveted job in a top company, the stakes are that much more intense.
Here’s a select list of 5 people who, in a bid to get noticed and hired by their favourite company, went out of their way, and created these insanely creative or offbeat resumés tailor made for the company they were applying for.
So, you think you worked hard on your resumé?
1. Philip Dobost for Amazon
Philip is a Tech Product Manager in NYC, who wanted to get a job with Amazon- The world’s biggest online store.
And while the rest of us were bending over backwards to add wordy career objectives, and wondering how many pages in resumé are ideal, Philip recreated a whole Amazon page as a résumé! The webpage, err resumé, illustrates his skills as the “product” summary and of course “product details” are his physical attributes.
Did he get the Amazon job? Nope, but according to an update from Philip himself, he has found a job with the online cosmetics sampling company Birchbox.
2. Mathew Epstein for Google
Who doesn’t work to work at Google?
So, enter Matthew Epstein and his creative guerrilla job résumé video.
With the remainder of his savings account, armed only with a mustache and online marketing savvy, he set forth on an epic quest to land a job at Google.
It was a very creative attempt that unfortunately didn’t get him a job at Google, (we hear it’s because he was clearly more suited for a marketing role, while he applied to be a product developer) but it certainly got a LOT of media attention, over 1 million views on YouTube and a job at a fun start-up company called SigFig.
3. Alice Lee for Instagram
Alice Lee was a 20 yr old Upenn, Wharton student who really wanted to work for Instagram. Back in 2012, she created a website, Dear Instagram – With Love, Alice, (which now doesn’t have the resume anymore and has turned into a full-fledged site to showcase her entire portfolio) to host her 4-page resume.
Lee spent 2.5 days building and designing the resume site, during which she skipped four classes and ate several bowls of Ramen. Lee said she wanted to work for Instagram because it would perfectly marry her love of photography and tech.
Did Alice finally end up working at Instagram? According to Facebook, looks like she’s got a job with Dropbox instead.
4. Elski Felcon for Snapchat
While the others recreated the company’s medium to showcase the résumé, this guy used the medium itself to create his!
Elski Felcon, applied for a job at Snapchat using snaps as his résumé and put it together in this video.
Reports say, that Elski has not heard back from Snapchat about his “application” as yet.
5. Nina Mufleh for AirBnB
The latest entrant in the craziest résumé party is Nina Mufleh. Mufleh always wanted to work for Airbnb. After moving from the Middle East, Mufleh lived in San Francisco for a year, unable to land a single interview with the company after months of submitting job applications, answering listings and sending emails to the company — until now.
Fueled by a a renewed passion, she did not rework her old résumé but redesigned it completely to show AirBnB what it was missing and how she Nina could help. With the help of a web designer from her previous job, she created this webpage, replicating the AirBnB site completely, showcasing a detailed analysis of AirBnB’s potential in the middle east. According to Mulfeh, it took a week of researching and gathering market data to create the resumé.
Not without results though, as her creativity blew the minds of Airbnb’s higher-ups and she landed an interview with the founder.
Update: Nina Mufleh, unfortunately did not land the dream job with AirBnB and is working with the startup Upwork currently.
While the status of these job applications featured here may not speak highly of the success rate of this approach, it’s great to see that people are thinking out of the box, and it looks like the good ol’ black and white word résumé may slowly die a typewriter’s death. Plus, the added eyeballs and website hits could help with snagging other gigs for life.