Job hunting in the extreme

Having countless job applications knocked back inspired one employment seeker to take a non-traditional approach in his job hunt.

Meet the extreme job hunter, Dan Conway. He has tried anything and everything to try to capture the attention of hiring managers, from a video resume with his daughter pleading with people to employ her dad to auctioning himself on eBay.

The Englishman’s rebranding as the Extreme Job Hunter begun after the unemployed dad-of-two continually failed to get any interviews or call-backs after applying for jobs in a traditional manner.

“One day I thought I’d test the water by applying for a job with a really outrageous cover letter. It got me an interview. They loved it. I realised it could be a great way to demonstrate my skills rather than telling them about my skills on a piece of paper with types words,” Conway told HRM Online.

From there Conway said he spent about six weeks drawing up a list of “humorous, quirky, and smart techniques” to try.

“Some ideas I got off other famously creative approaches that worked, majority I thought of myself, making sure that ether I got a job or not, the stunt itself would make noise and cause people to talk and share on social media,” he said.

Then came the stunts which included sending monopoly money bribes, a topless picket on a busy commuter route and a picture of him with his daughter holding a chalkboard saying ‘If this picture gets 10,000 likes, 'Bauer Media' will give my Daddy a job.’ He got 4,500 likes, an interview but no job.

He also went as far as buying Google ads so that if the head of BBC, Tony Hall, googled his name, at the top would be an ad that read, ‘Hello Tony Hall - Please give me a job -theextremejobhunter.com’.  As well as entering the World Gravy Wrestling Championships where he walked around with a shirt saying he’d wrestle for a job and placard with his website.

His antics have generally been well received.

“The general public loved it. They saw it in the positive light that I was an unemployed person trying to be proactive. They saw me as someone who didn't want to chill in the house enjoying the benefits hardworking taxpayers provide,” he said.  “Employers either loved it or hated it. My approach was never going to impress an accountancy firm as it’s completely irrelevant. But it certainly caught the attention and impressed many potential employers and people in my industry.”

And now after six months of trying outrageous tactics to land employment and around 100 job applications extreme job hunting has finally paid off for Conway. He is now an online marketing executive for Vitamins Direct Online.

“They approached me after coming across my website and social media pages and thought I'd be great for using my extreme job hunter style and ideas to help promote them,” Conway said. “I'm really pleased and relieved.” 

Would you hire someone who took a different approach to try and land employment? Tell us in the comments section below.