I'm no visionary, but at some point the thought did cross my mind, "This is an industry filled with people that look at things in an atypical way." Now, if I wanted to be one of them, how could I prove that I too had the capacity for this? It wasn't enough to be educated, qualified, or knowledgeable, I had to demonstrate my unique ability to not just think outside the box, but live outside its walls as well.
I'd spent months sitting at the library filling out dozens upon dozens of job applications, scouring LinkedIn for open positions, and occasionally being distracted by Buzzfeed. What the hell was I doing wrong?
My thought process was as follows...
1 - "What? Of course I want to know what the 15 greatest things since sliced bread are! But wait, what are the 34 things I never knew about Leonardo DiCaprio? I MUST KNOW!"
2 - "I need to end these distractions or I'm never landing a job, but this site has me glued. If only my resume was as noteworthy as the dozens of intriguing, yet hopelessly distracting articles I've gone through."
3 - "Wait...what if my plain and boring resume WAS one of these articles? EUREKA!" (That's Russian for "Oye, I got it!")
The appeal of Buzzfeed is simple; everyone loves lists and stories. Why not turn something that everyone hates reading into something everyone can't get enough of? At one point I recalled the guy who turned his CV into a fake Amazon page or more recently, the girl who created her CV using Lego. It was brilliant, and so simple. What better way to break into an industry that values originality and imagination than with a little originality of my own.
And within days of posting it on the Facebook walls of several agencies...
The moral of this story...
A resume has no business being on Buzzfeed, a link on a Facebook wall asking for a job has no chance of actually landing you a job, and there's no reason any of this should have worked. But, being too outlandish to succeed was the exact reason it did work. So, whether you're in the initial strides of your job hunt, manage a few dozen employees, or oversee a global enterprise, never forsake the unusual or inexplicable methods, for you can never foresee the tools to your success.
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