Over the years, creative job candidates have transformed their resumes into billboards, video games, Spotify playlists, and even six-second Vines (remember Vines?), but the resume Karly Blackburn recently sent to Nike really takes the cake.
Karly, a would-be marketeer or brand manager from Wilmington, North Carolina, was keenly interested in Valiant Labs, a startup incubator for Nike. She couldn’t find any current openings at Valiant Labs but still wanted to convey her enthusiasm. Karly knew that Nike’s main campus in Beaverton, Oregon, was hosting Just Do It Day, a celebration that would draw Drake, Travis Scott, Russell Westbrook, and Lisa Leslie, among others.
And Just Do It is exactly what Karly did. She found an Albertsons grocery store that makes cakes with edible images on the top. She reached out to the store and sent them her resume, which — as it turns out — was just the icing on the cake.
She found an intrepid Instacart driver to deliver the cake. Then she waited. No nibbles from Nike (at least, not yet), but more than 110K likes and reactions to her LinkedIn post with her recipe for reaching out.
The post generated more than 4,400 comments, some of them wondering if this was a half-baked idea. One commenter called it “an awful approach” and another, “a terrible gimmick.”
But most people who weighed in admired Karly’s creativity and initiative. “This is fantastic,” wrote one, while another called it “pure genius.” And one said, slightly tongue in cheek: “This is perhaps the only instance where having more than a one-page resume would be appreciated.”
“Great idea and effort,” chimed in Robert Adams, founder of Texas-based Chai and Coaching. Robert finished by noting: “Relationships, networking, and referrals are the way to go. And if a tasty resume cake helps, then why not?!”
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