I was once a firm believer that the two worst experiences in life were moving and dying. While I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the second one, I’ve done the first one a couple times and it gets worse every time. I think I’m going to add a new experience to form an “axis of evil” of life experiences. Everything about the act of gaining employment is horrendous.
Writing a resume blows. Searching online every day sucks. Rewriting the resume to fit a certain job is a soul suck. Applying and never hearing back is a punch in the face. Applying, getting interviewed, AND THEN NEVER HEARING BACK might be worse than moving and death combined. It’s all one massive mind fuck.
Jeff Scardino, a senior creative at Ogilvy & Mather and a professor at the Miami Ad School in Brooklyn, might have finally cracked the code in job hunting. If not, he just did something really hilarious with his resume that seems to be working. He designed the relevant résumé — a resume filled with every failures, awful reference, and non-skill acquired during his time as a working stiff.
Here’s a copy of Jeff body of bad work.
Not bad. Wait, bad, but it’s not a bad idea. Don’t act shock to find out it’s actually working for him.
Scardino applied for 10 positions, all of which he was qualified for and genuinely interested in. Not all the positions were in the realm of advertising, his expertise. “I kept it within my skill set,” he tells us of his application process. “But I did expand outside of advertising by applying for writing roles.”
He sent in two separate applications to each company, spacing them out over a week and using a different name and address on each one. He also wrote separate cover letters to pair with the different résumés.
The results were surprisingly lopsided.
The regular résumé received one response and zero meeting requests, while the relevant résumé received eight responses and five meeting requests.
It’s a bold move by Scardino but one I’ve been doing for years. My resume has always been a list of my failures.
[via Ask Men]