4 clever ways to land a job that you haven’t tried

Getting a new job is probably one of the biggest challenges you will face in your life, and so it’s vital that you have a great job search strategy. But the reality today is that sometimes you need more than just a good job search technique – you need an edge.

If you really want to get ahead of the game and find a new job in record time – way ahead of the achingly slow 43 day average for finding a job – you’ll need a unique job search strategy that makes use of secret back doors that few others know about. We did some research and discovered these 4 clever ways to land a job that you probably haven’t thought of yet.

1. Use social media ads to target hiring managers

No job seeker can be expected to fork out the 5 or 6 figure sums necessary to take out a primetime radio or TV ad to market their services. It’s lucky then that affordable advertising is now available to all via social media channels. Few people realize that, for a modest investment, you can use Facebook’s ad targeting tools to write a short self-promotional social media advertisement and have it strategically placed in front of hiring managers, recruiters, and decision makers at employers you want to work for.

Think it won’t work? Think again. With an investment of only $30, Ian Greenleigh got 50 Google employees to consider him as a candidate. He had previously landed a job at his dream employer with this method.

It doesn’t stop there: Marian Schembari got work at Harper Collins using Facebook ad targeting.

There’s more: from just one ad, Sam Solomon got a call the following day from a start-up, scheduled 5 interviews, had 18 job job-related emails and received plenty of well-wisher emails. Not bad results for a $150 investment!

Done the right way, Facebook ads (or other social media ad platforms if you have a larger budget) are a unique but highly effective way to land a new job. One heads up, though: this method might not work for job seekers in the marketing/advertising industries since this trick has been around for a few years and some hiring managers may not consider this approach novel anymore. However, it’s probably still a safe bet to use this tactic for non-advertising/marketing jobs where you have a higher chance of impressing your potential future employer – as long as you do it correctly.

2. Rent a billboard

You probably think that renting a billboard to post a self-promotional job search ad is going to result in the wasting of a lot of money. Well, if we’re being honest, it could be. While billboard advertising does require a slightly bigger financial investment up front, there actually have been instances where it worked.

Perhaps the most successful billboard ad for finding a job was the one by Adam Pacitti who spent his last £500 on a billboard ad and received 60 solid job offers as a result:

[av_video src=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrXyRS5Q4g0′ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′]

Another successful rent-a-billboard job search campaign was by Bennet Olson who spent $300 on a billboard and received lots of interviews, support, and a job offer that he accepted. Renting a billboard and posting a ‘hire me’ ad on it may sound crazy, but it sometimes works, and will help you stand out from the crowd. Just be sure to use humor and positivity in your ad, as studies show that emotionally moving ads work best.

3. Hand your resume out on the street

Now, handing your resume out to passersby on the street is a bold and brazen approach to job seeking that few have the confidence and audacity to try. It’s the fear-factor of this very approach that prevents most people from daring to do it, interestingly making it one of the most unique approaches you can take to find a job. But does it work? Apparently, it does. Donnie Grooms stood outside Busch Stadium in the US handing out his resume, and after his wife posted this picture of him on Facebook, he attracted international attention and received job offers from Seoul, South Korea, Sydney, Frankfurt, Germany, Dubai, London, and New York. Eventually, he accepted a local job in St. Louis where he’s still working today. It’s not a one off either: a homeless man in Sacramento sat in the street with a ‘Need work and hungry’ sign and a handful of printed resumes in envelopes. After handing them out, he was eventually offered a job with a downtown restaurant.

4. Create a unique and memorable resume

Now, if you are going to take the traditional route of sending your resume to employers, you’d better make sure it stands out. One way to make your resume capture attention is to create an unusual – but appropriate – resume. For example, one successful job seeker made a chocolate bar resume, called a ‘Resume Bar’, which was featured on Mashable, where the packaging featured the resume details of the applicant. Another job seeker managed to land an interview with Google Canada due to his unique Rubik’s cube resume.

If your current method of job searching works for you, you probably don’t need to change it, especially if you’re consistently getting job interviews or offers. But if you happen to be struggling to find a job, are becoming desperate or feeling down right unemployable – like many of the people mentioned above were – you have little to lose by trying a slightly different approach.

More importantly, if you ever feel like you’ve applied for every job you can and still can’t get an offer of employment, we highly encourage you to reach out to a recruiting agency for assistance. Usually, agencies have access to job openings from their clients that have not yet been made public, which give recruiters a head-start to comb through their pool of candidates first. If your skills and experience align with one of those jobs, the recruiter will be able to get your foot in the door to an interview – getting you ahead of the competition, without having to jump through hoops to get noticed.