The Cake Resume You Have To See To Believe
It may be an employees' market right now with staff shortages making many businesses desperate for hires, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to simply waltz into your dream job. No, securing the position that you've coveted since you were old enough to form career aspirations will require a great deal of effort on your part — and a stellar resume.
Yes, your resume is the key to landing that all-important interview, so it had better be captivating. After all, CNBC shares that hiring officers will typically spend a mere 7.4 seconds looking at a resume, so you clearly need to do something to make yours stand out. Per Harvard Business Review, John Lees, the author of "Knockout CV," describes a resume as "a marketing document" designed to sell you and your ability to do what the employer needs done.
There are, however, a few other tips that may make the recruitment officer more receptive. For instance, Business News Daily recommends submitting your resume "between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. within the first four days of a job being posted." And, as Zety reveals, the number-one way to make sure your resume stands out from the rest in the pile is to make it "visually appealing." Well, what could be more visually appealing than printing your resume on a vanilla cake? And, no, this is not a hypothetical question. Someone actually did this.
Nike received a resume printed on a cake
If you want to stand out from a pile of paper, submitting a sheet cake resume will definitely do the trick. This is exactly what Karly Blackburn did in hopes of securing her dream job at Nike with its creative division, Valiant Labs (via LinkedIn). While the company didn't have any positions advertised at the time, Blackburn wanted its recruitment team to be aware of her. When she discovered that Nike would be holding a celebration for Just Do It Day, she found a grocery store that could make a cake with an image of her resume on top and an extremely dedicated Instacart driver to ensure it got into the right hands.
What was Nike's take on her creative submission? Blackburn told Today that not only has she been in contact with the folks at Nike, but she has a number of other companies interested as well. She says that now it's just a matter of finding "the right fit culture-wise, and a company that has a good mission and is doing something great not just within their product, but for other people." KGW8 reveals that the Instacart driver, Denise Baldwin, has also become a LinkedIn legend in her own right, winning praise for going above and beyond the call of duty in getting the sugar-laden resume into exactly the right hands. And, amid fielding her own job negotiations, Blackburn has promised to help Baldwin land a full-time position as well.