59 Batshit Crazy ways to get your resume read
Avoid the shred by playing dead, and other tips
- To get your resume read, invent a fucking time machine and go back to the 1990’s and apply in person. Don’t forget your firm handshake!!! #winning #tigersblood.
- To get your resume past the Applicant Terrorizing System, invent a new ATS platform. That way you’ll actually know how it works instead of being told to redo your resume over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again by recruiters.
- Want to get your resume in front of people? Create a viral youtube channel dedicated to parodying popular songs. “Oops I applied again” by Britney Spears is a top choice, and you know you’ll score the gig with “I want to get paid” by the Backstreet Boys.
- Here’s a neat tip for getting in contact with hiring managers: hack their email account and slowly drive them crazy by rewriting their drafts. Once they start to cave under the mental stress, message them on their own account telling them you’ll stop terrorizing them when they read the resume you sent 7 weeks ago that has been left unopened in their inbox.
- Use SlyDial Premium to automate a crapload of voice mail messages asking for interviews. If all else fails, you can simply sing your “Oops I applied again” parody. Works every time. Especially if you’re off key.
- Create a twitter robot that tweets at every single company in your field, asking if they have any open positions. You’re bound to get at least 1 reply. If you’re lucky you’ll get a DM asking you to ‘pls stop’, OR a cease and desist letter.
7. Pull an Amelie and take photos of yourself in a photo booth. Replace her lovelorn request for a meetup with your own version of “Please for the love of God will you just read my fucking resume already?”.
8. Get in contact with the Asgard from Stargate SG-1. Thor is a bro and wingman like no other. If anyone can help you get hired, it’s totally the little grey alien men floating around earth bolstering our defenses against the goa’uld.
9. Dress to impress and walk into a meeting that you weren’t invited to. This requires a healthy dose of stalking, or, if you used tip #4, you can just hijack their google calendar and figure out when to show up. *May cause legal repercussions and a swift kick out the door.
10. Need a job? Pretend you already work there. There’s bound to be some redundant workers shoved on a random floor somewhere. If you become their doppelganger and take their place, maybe nobody will notice?
11. In order to get your resume seen, reach out to some recruiters. Make sure to reply to their linkedin messages offering you employ, even if it’s for a role you absolutely have no experience in and would never in a million years take!
12. Sacrifice a live chicken to your deity of choice to get your resume seen. I hear this works sometimes, but Satan isn’t answering my pleas. Maybe I pissed him off somehow. Must’ve been when I said pineapple belongs on pizza. He’s been ghosting me for months.
13. In order to get your resume seen, write it in Klingon. Then you’ll be hired by Klingons or Star Trek fans, and either way, it’s a win/win.
14. Fake your own death to get your resume read. Elaborately construct fake news articles on Wordpress and backdate the entries to look like you were suddenly killed in a freak avocado toast accident. Then they’ll HAVE to read the goddamn thing.
15. Do #14 and ‘come back to life’ and start a cult. Make your cult members pay you dues — and then you never have to work, ever, ever again. Until the government busts you for brainwashing people with episodes of Caillou.
16. Become a practicing fine artist to get your resume seen. At your gallery opening, do an interpretive dance with a very long artist’s statement about wanting to get hired for a role you are qualified for and have tons of experience in. Maybe some wacky art collector will buy you your freedom from wage-slave hell.
17. At some point universal basic income will have to be a thing, as robots will have effectively taken all our jobs. When this happens, you can rest easy as your necessities are paid for and really take the time to make a fantastic first impression with companies you actually want to work for. I’m going for #13 when that happens. Star Trek nerds make the best employers!
18. When you write your cover letter, use quotes from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It’s a very inspirational show. Who knows, you might get lucky like #13 and the hiring manager is a Buffy fan!
19. To get your resume seen, have your witch friend read your tarot cards before you apply. Then you won’t have to waste time applying to something the universe doesn’t think is a good fit for you.
20. Create your own business just because. Then you can essentially go on to hire other people, and end these nonsense hiring practices. If you start to become the change you wish to see in the world, maybe other people will change too.
21. Become friends with Russian Hackers to get your resume seen. They’re really good at swaying elections and causing mass chaos. They’ll be able to easily permeate your resume across the internet. If you achieve market saturation, you’ll get hired in no time!
22. To get your resume to the top of the pile, create a video game where the hiring manager plays as you. Each level represents your prior jobs, with all the tasks you had to do. Once they realized how fucking skilled you have to be to complete even one of the levels and not get a GAME OVER, they’ll flock to you like you’re the Ghosts ‘n Goblins champion you are.
23. To get your resume seen, roll a natural 20.
24. If you suspect that your resumes aren’t getting read because of biases like age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, etc just make up a fake person you think they’d hire and apply with the same resume. Make sure to use a super milquetoast sounding name like Amanda Grayson or John Smith. And don’t forget the social media handles!
25. To get your resume seen, lie on your cover letter. Say you worked for Google even if you didn’t. Say you worked for Apple even if you didn’t. People lie on their resumes and cover letters all the time. It’s no biggie, right?
26. Create a zombie virus and infect a huge group of people to get your resume seen. Make sure you take the antidote / antibodies first. If there are less resumes to read, you win, right? Well, ATS is still a thing…shit.
27. Clone yourself so that your clone can write resumes and apply to jobs for you. You’re probably still working full time as you try to leave your soul crushing job, or you’re so depressed you can’t get out of bed. So having an extra pair of hands will help. But they’re you, so they might just give up and you may just both agree to cuddle and binge-watch Stranger Things. Hey, at least you have a new friend!
28. Pretend you own a business and hire other people as interns to write and send out your resume for you. This is kind of like hiring a marketer and labeling the job as an internship to get away with not paying them. It’s really unethical and you should feel bad for not paying people.
29. To get your resume seen, start a crowd sourced, grass-roots campaign where everyone who sends out your resume gets $1. If they get you hired, they get $400. That way you can avoid recruiters, and your hacker nephew will be able to buy a PS4. You’ve blown up the recruiting industry, AND you got your nephew into gaming. Rad!
30. In order to get your resume seen, be a nice person who excels in their field and have a great portfolio. Oh wait, that only works .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the time. Oops.
31. If you’re a content marketer like me, use your engagement numbers to get your resume through the door! Stats on your resume always impress people! Except when they don’t for some reason. Time to stuff some keywords so the ATS can’t can you!
32. Join the Church of Scientology to get your resume seen. Hey, it’s worked for soooo many celebrities with dying careers. It’ll probably work for you, too! Just remember to keep your head on straight, and if Tom Cruise shows up, RUN.
33. Forego looking for human jobs altogether and become a demonic creature from the Stranger Things. They’ll take just about anybody. You’ll be scary, eat people, and basically live in Silent Hill. It’s kind of fantastic and I’m honestly considering this career shift. I’m not kidding, this is not a joke. I am willing to be a minion of darkness.
34. Get Athena on your side if you want your resume seen. She’s a pretty amazing God and will probably spear the shit out of people who reject you. Yay!
35. To get your resume seen, join the anti-vaxxers. They will literally lobby against anything even remotely related to diseases, vaccinations, or anything that protects the health of the public. If you write an article about how vaccinations have made you incapable of being hired, they’ll champion the shit out of you.
36. Try reading The Secret if you want your resume to be read. It doesn’t matter if this science fiction / historical fiction piece of crap doesn’t actually work. People get REALLY IMPRESSED when you say you’ve read The Secret for some reason. Even if it’s a load of horse shit.
37. Schedule meetings with random CEOs to get your resume seen. Use Hunter.io to scrape their email and set up a shitload of meetings in Google Calendar. They aren’t going to know who you are, but if you pretend you know them, maybe they’ll try to save face and agree to meet with you anyways. Y-yay?
38. Write a novel that makes it as a New York Times best seller! Hire an editor with your non-existent money. If you write a sprawling science fiction novel that actually gets critical acclaim— people have to reach out! Except no one likes to read anymore and science fiction is for nerds! (This is actually my backup tactic clocking in at 214 google doc pages so far, not even kidding. I have 10 more chapters, another 3 once-overs, and then I’ll sell one of my kidneys to get an editor.)
39. If you want to get your resume seen, change everything you are. Be anyone but yourself, and you’ll get the gig! PRETEND TO BE STEVE BUSCEMI PRETENDING TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT.
40. To get your resume read by a hiring manager, design a dress with your resume printed out on it. Walk around the city with it and pass out your business cards. Works like a charm!
41. Want to get your resume seen? Say “Hire me” three times while looking in a mirror, at midnight, holding a blue flame candle. You might get a ghost though, so be prepared with salt and iron to fight the beastie back!
42. Just become an actual robot to get your resume seen. Transhumanism will soon be a thing, so you can delete all your flaws — like having emotions or a personality — hurray!
43. To get your resume seen, create your own job portal but instead, it’s a RESUME portal! I actually know how to do this on Wordpress — it’s really easy — and I’m contemplating just putting resumes from cool, nice, talented people up. That might be the only way through this mess…
44. Want to get past the job application process, and get your skills seen? Turn your power level to over 9000 and Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z will show up and hire you! It’s really that simple.
45. Are you tired of submitting your unique cover letters, over and over again, with no results? Put some tuna on your keyboard and have your cat write them! Everyone loves cats!
46. If you want your resume to get more love, rewrite it again! I know, I know, you have 15 different versions and you keep getting different tips and nothing works. Maybe you just lack project management experience, although you list you’ve been a PM for 10 years. That’s a possibility, right?
47. Speaking of #35, let’s get on board with the conspiracy theory train! To get your resume seen, contact the flat earthers and let them know you’re struggling because the wind over the earth blew your resume off to the ice wall at the edge! They’ll totally help you out! They’re desperate for some hard evidence.
48. I know, it seems nuts, but a great way to get your resume seen is to email people. This works for me pretty well, except for the people who call me entitled for emailing them and asking if they have any positions open because I love their company. I only directly email companies I love….weird that the love doesn’t go both ways.
49. To get your resume seen by the right people, shoot it off into space inside of a satellite, preferably on a golden disc. If you get really lucky, an alien will hire you!
50. Do you want to get your resume seen? Team up with Vin Diesel and The Rock and drive your resume fast and furiously across the country looking for hot leads. They’ll totally help you out. They’re Family.
51. Snagging a job with your resume can be rough. It can take a lot of time, preparation and planning. But an easy way to nab a job is to set some job traps and once they’re good and stuck, shoot them with your resume rifle.
52.
- Heat oven to 375ºF.
- Mix skills, employers, job experience and words in large bowl.
- Stir in keywords, contact information, and wine to taste.
- Drop resume sections by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto word document on an ungreased laptop.
- Fling laptop into the oven. Bake 10 to 40000000 minutes or until someone finally hires you.
- Warning, baking your resume for too long can lead to burn-out.
53. Can’t get your foot in the door with your resume? Have you tried Investing? Cash in your hard earned exposure and experience points at the company of your choice. They are directly transferable to a working position. Don’t give me that look.
54. Resume not being read? Start on your Bizarre Adventure with a group of friends and systematically defeat bad-guys with your superpowers as you trek across Egypt to defeat a vampire who can stop time. After you save the world, people will be flocking to read your CV!
55. Job portals got you down? Infiltrate a nuclear power plant and stick yourself in the middle of all the fucking radiation. The massive amounts of exposure will make you so attractive in the job market you’ll be literally radioactive and able to be seen from space.
56. To get your resume seen, sometimes you gotta know somebody. Kidnap your future boss’s daughter or son and convert them to your Caillou cult (see #15). Replace them by wearing their clothes. You don’t have to do anything else, just wear their clothes. Pretty soon nepotism will kick in, and you’ll be a winner!
57. Want to get your resume read? Hire a bunch of Girl Scouts to do pitches for you. Instruct them to lie and say there are no more thin mints, but insinuate that there would, in fact, be thin mints, if the hiring manager read your resume.
58. To get your resume seen, create an elaborate plan to derail your hiring manager on their way home. Make sure to rig their car. End up luring them down a dark, winding road, to a light. Over at the Frankenstein place. Invite them inside even though they seem uncomfortable. When they’ve just gotten over their fears, remark about how astounding it is that Time is fleeting. Madness takes it’s toll. But tell them to Listen closely.(Not for very much longer). So you can read off your prior roles.
59. Get your resume read by being the very best. Like no one ever was. To score jobs is the real test. And to get paid is your cause. You’ll travel across the land, searching far and wide. Teaching employers, to understand, the power that’s inside…………………………………………………………………
Email me at hello@thereisno.design if you like what I’m throwing down.
Add me on linkedin if you’re feeling particularly ballsy.
Or you can add me on Discord to talk about nerdy things: windows95toasteroven#3745
— Kira Leigh
