Creative Resumes

The blog below by Johnny Lieu is really good food for thought. I love the candy bar — don’t think it would work for every employer, but staying creative and top of mind is how you will stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Sending cover letters and resumes (while a necessity sometimes) is not always the #1 answer/strategy to getting in front of potential employers. We must continue to reinvent ourselves and stand out — especially when switching industries.

This woman had help designing the wrapper, but we all have a support network (whether it’s family, friends, mentors, etc.) — use them to find your next dream job!

The chocolate bar resumé is still a surefire way of getting noticed in a job search
By Johnny Lieu

There’s no hiding the fact that job hunting really sucks.

The worst part of it is sending endless resumés and cover letters, only to receive an equally depressing number of knockbacks in your inbox.

Amid the worry and the trepidation of potentially living on instant noodles for a while, there is a solution: Chocolate, but wrapped with one’s resumé. That’s what Renata Chunderbalsingh from Sydney, Australia, is doing in an attempt to land herself a job in market research.

It’s a big change of career from her previous life in the education industry, which is why the resumé bar was a way she could stand out, despite an admitted lack of direct experience in the field.

“I am new to the industry, and was thinking well, ‘how can I get out there and tell them that I’m good?'” she told Mashable Australia. “I thought, I have to differentiate myself from the crowd.”

Resource: Mashable.com

Chunderbalsingh got some help with the design, but printed and wrapped the bar herself. For the chocolate aficionados out there, the bar is from Lindt.

A few of the bars were made and sent to different recruitment agencies and companies in the past week, but she said the most positive response was from Gemma Lewis from Resources Group, who posted it to much fanfare on LinkedIn.

“Not sure if we were bribed or charmed, but either way it prompted a lovely chat with Renata this morning,” Lewis wrote in her post.

Lewis told Mashable Australia via email it’s the most creative CV she’s ever received, with the response to it “all a bit surreal” — especially as she was just hoping for a few leads for jobs.

“I rarely get anything in the post so that was unique in itself. Otherwise some candidates stand out in terms of design, infographics and formatting of CVs, catchy headlines in emails, content in the opening statement or hobbies even, but nothing like this,” she said.

Chunderbalsingh said Lewis has been helping out “a lot” with the job search, which has prompted offers — albeit all the way in Europe. “Hopefully I’ll finally find a job, and keep this as a nice memory of how I started my career,” she laughs.

It’s of course not the first time chocolate has been used to get attention. A post on reddit from back in 2013 featured a resumé bar, with the post claiming that it had landed a friend a job.

Still proof that anything — but paper and emails — gets plenty of attention all these years on.