Instantprint
- Jonathan Swift printed leaflets with a QR code to his LinkedIn and left them on a recruiter’s car.
- He said that he wanted to make sure that recruiters at Instantprint saw his job application.
- Hiring manager Craig Wassell said his application was “unignorable” and offered him a job.
Making your job application stand out is difficult. But one 24-year old job seeker’s creative approach helped him land a role.
Jonathan Swift printed paper leaflets containing the words: “Hello I’m Jonathan” alongside a QR code that connected to his LinkedIn profile. He then left them on the cars parked outside the firm he wanted to apply for.
He was offered a job after the stunt impressed the hiring manager.
“It was a bit of a risk actually. Because obviously, it could have not gone well,” Swift told Insider. “When I first did it I knew I wanted to make an impression in the office, but I didn’t expect it to get this big.”
Like many workers during what’s been dubbed the Great Resignation, Swift left his previous role in graphic design because he wanted to move into a job in marketing.
Instantprint, an online printing company, was particularly appealing because it is a five-minute drive from his house in Rotherham, near Sheffield, in the UK.
Having initially applied for the role of marketing executive online, he wanted to make sure that his application was seen. During his three-month job search, he’d applied for around 20 jobs but only heard back from one.
He’d read about an Instantprint employee who’d applied for a role by leaving a life-size banner of herself outside the office, and thought “it couldn’t hurt” to do something similar.
“In a marketing job where you need to basically stand out from the crowd, I thought it’d be the perfect way of showing that as well,” Swift said.
He already had some leaflets printed that he’d used earlier in his job search, so drove to Instantprint’s office and placed leaflets under the windscreen of cars parked in the car park. A video of his actions was later shared by the company on Twitter, and then picked up by The Mirror newspaper.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Here’s some CCTV footage of the <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/jobseeker?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#jobseeker</a> in action! He’s been the talk of the office since covering everyone's cars in CVs. I love it when we get a <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/creativejobapplication?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#creativejobapplication</a> – Craig, Marketing Manager <a href=”https://t.co/OmE5puQgwI”>pic.twitter.com/OmE5puQgwI</a></p>— instantprint (@instantprintuk) <a href=”https://twitter.com/instantprintuk/status/1483429604958388224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 18, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
The facilities manager for the building collected the leaflets and handed them to Craig Wassell, marketing manager at Instantprint, who was recruiting for the role.
“It was literally unignorable,” Wassell told Insider.
He said that Swift’s “inside-the-box creative idea” stood out from the 140 applicants because it was exactly how the company’s customers used the product, and showed ambition.
Instantprint
The fact that Swift used Instantprint to print his leaflet was an added bonus.
Wassell said the company usually has a two-stage interview process, the first of which determines whether an applicant is the right fit for the role.
“But I think obviously doing this sort of ticks all those boxes, so we were able to fast track the interview process a little bit,” Wassell said.
Swift was invited for a 15-minute interview the next day. He then had to complete a task, which involved creating a mailing campaign for the company’s products. This is something that Wassell said he’d essentially proved already through his leaflet.
Swift started his role a week later.
His advice for anyone who wants their job application to stand out is to “think outside the box.”
“Don’t be afraid. Rather than just sitting down indoors, if it’s not too far from you, doing things by hand or face to face gives off a good impression,” he added.
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