The Unemployed Life

Job Seekers: Look at Me!

Why did the jobseeker put a shoe in his application? To get a foot in the door. Bah-dum-dum.

It’s come to this: The lingering downturn is turning the job market — and the lengths people will go for an interview — into a bad joke. In a recent CareerBuilder survey, one desperate applicant admitted to the shoe gag. But it wasn’t the worst approach, at least on the sliding scale of coming through desperate times with your dignity intact. Another applicant washed cars in a prospective employer’s parking lot to get noticed. Yet another baked a “business card” cake for an HR manager. And then there’s the guy who paid a CEO’s barber to talk him up during a haircut.

“Candidates have turned to extreme tactics,” says CareerBuilder’s Jason Ferrara, who oversaw the survey of more than 2,500 hiring execs. He warned that increasingly unusual strategies may well attract attention around an office, but should be done with “care and professionalism so that candidates are remembered for the right reasons.” Great advice, but too late for the dude who showed up for an interview in a pink bunny suit.

Don’t worry, though. The swelling ranks of the unemployed aren’t being overcome by cabin fever, not yet anyway. A separate CareerBuilder survey of 1,800 out-of-work Americans found they’re acting far more sane on the home front than on the job front. When they’re not dreaming up new ways to impress potential employers, many recently laid off workers are using their spare time to do home repairs, go to the gym, volunteer, or take classes, the survey found. They’re also reconnecting with friends and family, while learning to relax and enjoy life again. How crazy is that?

Tags: employers, job-hunting, jobs, The Unemployed Life