Between companies ghosting job applicants and companies advertising ghost jobs that don’t exist, it can feel harder than ever to find a job.
And so job-seekers trying to land a new role will sometimes do just about anything to try and get an employer’s attention.
But while some applicants might send in a curated portfolio of accomplishments, a personalized cover letter, or direct message to anyone who will listen via LinkedIn, one Melbourne-based designer, Felix Toohey, is taking a more dramatic approach.
Toohey hand delivers his CV directly to companies he is interested in working for—the old school way.
But he also takes it a step further, reimagining what a CV can look like in its physical form.
In one instance, he constructed a coffee tray with paper cups, each featuring paper “latte art” that labeled each section of a CV like “education” or “experience.” Inside each cup is a printed out paper with the relevant information for each section.
In another, a box that seems to hold lunch instead had fake sandwiches made of foam, with his résumé printed out to appear as lettuce and tomato.
“I wanted to be impossible to ignore”
These are all part of Toohey’s “Ghosting Busters” series, in which he makes “increasingly unhinged résumés” to avoid getting ghosted by employers—which he shares on Instagram to the public.
To date, he has created 10 different sculptural résumés.
While the project bleeds into his discipline as a designer, for Toohey, he first fell into the idea while struggling to find his footing in an increasingly competitive industry.
“When I graduated from uni, I was not prepared for how tough the creative industry was going to be,” he tells Fast Company. “I originally worked in a design agency as a barely paid intern before being let go unceremoniously.”
He has since worked in several design agencies and even started his own sustainable clothing brand, but landing a stable job as an art director has been a challenging path, often filled with silence.
“At first, I was applying online, but after over 200 applications and one interview, I knew I needed to switch up the way I was thinking about getting a job,” he says. “I wanted to be impossible to ignore.”
Hyper-specific applications
Each résumé is tailored to a specific agency, which he researches before even beginning the design process. For instance, he will figure out what the agency specializes in as well as pick up cues from the agency’s name, eventually landing on what medium to use.
“The key thing is to 100% commit to the bit, no matter how stupid it is,” Toohey says. “Using the name of the agency as a springboard for ideas is always where I start, but most recently I’ve ended up with robot arms or laser cutting my cover letter into a tombstone.”
Toohey’s additional efforts haven’t quite landed a job yet, although Canva did partner with him on a giant-sized résumé printed on a large canvas using one of its templates, in addition to a four-week art direction role.
However, he has attracted quite the view count on social media.
His sandwich box video has over 386,000 views on Instagram, while another résumé, which is based on an evidence dossier—he printed out evidence of his qualifications as if he was followed by a private investigator—reached over 181,000 viewers.
But beyond the fun projects, the résumés have been a sort of exploration into an increasingly challenging landscape for job-seekers. Toohey himself shared concerns over the hoops he has had to jump through, or the common corporate practices that often don’t favor incoming talent.
“The prevalence of ”ghost jobs” has been shocking to experience first-hand,” he says.
“Another thing I have experienced is that so many businesses change a role after filling it. I have lost many opportunities to this,” Toohey adds. “This wastes so much time and has been a real knock to my confidence.”
Some job-seekers may be concerned that having to go the extra mile, so to speak, unfairly raises an already seemingly unreachable bar. For Toohey, this is just one approach he’s willing to try to land his dream job.
“The jobs I’m going for are hard to get because they’re a privilege to do,” he says. “Naturally, you do get people seeing my résumés and feeling like they have to go to the same lengths, but this way of doing things is just my conclusion.”
“I don’t have to get my dream job,” adds Toohey. “But I’m going to give it my absolute best shot.”
