We often hear from job seekers who are frustrated with traditional job search tactics and feel the need to take the road less traveled to stand out. We’ve heard about a lot of interesting gimmicks, like the girl who wanted to work at Airbnb so she built a webpage to highlight her resume to mimic an Airbnb posting, or someone else who created wrappers for chocolate bars with her resume in place of the nutrition label, or Daniel Seibert who just this week put up a billboard to advertise that he is looking for a career.
While it’s not the first time we’ve heard about someone putting up a billboard to complement traditional job search efforts, it’s the most recent, so we wanted to reach out to him to understand his motivations. Has he been searching for an opportunity for a long time? Is he frustrated with the current process?
So we called Daniel Siebert (and you should too, if you’re looking for an HR Generalist with a master’s degree or you know someone he could network with). Daniel’s billboard was brought to our attention here at Nexxt by a friend of an employee who snapped a photo of it near Hershey, Pennsylvania (yes where the chocolate is made). We’re always trying to understand how candidates are feeling during their search, so we decided to give him a call.
We also wanted to understand—in 2016 when everything is digital and accessible on a device in your pocket—what makes someone decide to put up a billboard to demonstrate one’s desire for a new job?
After graduating with a Masters in Human Resources in May 2016, this 25-year-old has been searching for jobs online via LinkedIn, Monster, and Indeed. And while he did land a few interviews, none of those opportunities panned out.
“I needed to do something different. Nothing else was working,” says Daniel. So he forked over $675 to put up the billboard for two weeks. So far it’s only been up for about a week, but he’s optimistic. “I’ve gotten calls from some people asking for my resume, but no interviews yet.”
When it comes to his job search in general, he said he’s positive despite the frustration he’s experiencing due to a lack of progress, but he is still early in the process.
To go from job seeker to hired employee, it usually takes one to three months according to HR Pros*. Given that Daniel was only searching for about two months, we were surprised that he took the steps to put up a billboard. An action like this is usually taken by someone who’s been searching for a long time, exhausted all other avenues, and is fed up. But Daniel doesn’t seem to be at that point. “I have gotten close several times so far, it is only a matter of time before something happens,” he said.
Overall, Daniel was really pleasant to chat with and came off as very positive, certainly someone that would be an asset to any HR department.
*44% of HR Pros say that their hiring process takes 1 to 3 months according to a Nexxt survey of more than 260 HR Pros in June 2015
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