Creating an average word document with a cover letter is no longer the way to go if you’d like to impress agencies offering creative and media-related jobs. Your next job application needs to stand out in the pile. Crafting a good copy isn’t enough. A CV needs to create an impression- NOT the glitter and glue kind.
Website: Going through the effort to create a CV website as a platform for your job application and portfolio is a sure way to impress. You don’t need to be a web designer to do it either. Creating a blog will cost you nothing and you can customise it to showcase your best qualities. From the background, to the font, your website can reflect who you are and why you think you deserve the job.
YouTube Video: A video CV can be a comical endeavour to undertake and make you a tough applicant to forget. If you’ve got a good sense of humour then draw up a script and run it by a few of your friends. If well-executed, a video job application could give you a foot in the door of the business you’re applying to. If you load it onto YouTube it might even go viral.
Twitter: This will only work if the company has a twitter account. Look at the job requirements and come up with 140 characters of pure genius to tweet @their-twitter-profile. You need to be able to be succinct enough to get your point across and catch their attention. Take a screenshot of your tweets and include them in a powerpoint slideshow.
Powerpoint Slideshow: If you can’t choose between the ideas above then do them all! Create a blog, a YouTube video and a twitter campaign and go back to the drawing board, creating a powerpoint slideshow that features the highlights of your job application. While you can’t be certain of success, you’re sure to have one hell of a shot.
Crawl the web for innovative sparkplugs that have sent in entertaining CVs and, as a result, have gotten a thumbs up and a chuckle from their potential employer. The best way to go about it is to look for industry experts’ websites; a lot of them feature winning job applications to coax the rest of us job seekers into exploring alternative application ideas. Gather a few applications that you could collaborate and tweak and you’re well on your way to creating a stellar online job application that doesn't smell of a sample template!