Sibusisiwe Khupe, 26, entered the job market once again in September after a wave of unexpected layoffs at London marketing agency Wieden+Kennedy.
She knew landing her next full-time role was not going to be easy. Young workers have been hit hard by the weakening UK job market as vacancies fall and unemployment climbs to a five-year high.
Khupe, however, had a plan.
“You can’t afford to not be confident or audacious because a lot of people are in the same boat,” she said. She called herself a “really hot, really talented, really funny” gen Zer in a post on LinkedIn. “I plastered my face across many, many slides along with my work experience. I was just very funny and authentic to who I was and just sent that to a bunch of senior executives.”
After about a four-month search, she landed a job that was also a step up – she is now a senior creative at Gravity Road, an advertising agency.
“In this climate, being bold and confident will go a long way because people will remember you,” she said.
Gen Z workers are entering the toughest job market since the pandemic. The number of job seekers vastly outweighs the number of positions, and competition is fierce. The global hiring rate has plunged to a five-year low and the number of applicants for every job opening has increased by nearly 30%, according to LinkedIn.
As companies lean heavily on AI to vet résumés and even do interviews en masse, new graduates are turning to social media platforms to stand out. Young workers are using quirky, personal videos, cold emails and offbeat social media posts to reach top executives directly.
TikToks are “essentially becoming extensions of gen Z’s résumés”, said Vicki Salemi, career expert and talent strategist at Monster and a former recruiting manager at Deloitte. “This generation is accustomed to creating content. They’re treating the job search more like content creation than a traditional application process.”
Gen Z is “aware that they have to employ every tactic out there available to them to get noticed”, said Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed.
Going viral
Some gen Zers in the US say they are sending out as many as 1,000 applications without landing a job.
Anya Roodnitsky, 22, applied to hundreds of jobs in her senior year at Dartmouth College, where she’s studying economics and environmental science. Each application took a few hours as she carefully tailored her résumé and cover letter to the role. By February, she hadn’t heard back from a single company.
“Not having a job offer lined up after college weighed down on me a lot,” Roodnitsky said. “I have an Ivy League degree. If I don’t get a job, what was the point of me going to college and investing this much into my education?”
After she hit the 300th application, she sat down at her kitchen table in New Hampshire, opened PowerPoint and filmed herself reformatting her résumé into a promotional slide deck, adding emojis, special skills and some desperate, self-deprecating humor. She described a $6,000 grant she got through school to model nuclear reactors as “I’m, like, super cool. I’m basically Oppenheimer.”
Roodnitsky ended by adding that she loves wearing business casual, will bring baked goods to the office and a plea for advice or leads. “It’s getting bad out there,” she said.
Young workers in the US are facing tough hiring conditions that are, by some measures, worse than they were during the Great Recession. Unemployment rates are higher, according to LinkedIn analysis, and layoffs are rising fast.
Roodnitsky’s 94-second video got over half a million views and thousands of shares. She had 52 coffee chats, 20 referrals, 10 interviews and finally got one full-time job offer as a solar analyst. She starts soon after she graduates this May.
“Instagram truly is the new LinkedIn,” she half joked.
Salemi said these strategies can help candidates network and land informational interviews. Video résumés can also highlight soft skills like storytelling, enthusiasm and passion – helping applicants stand out.
However, Salemi said it “is not a replacement to the résumé and structured hiring processes like applicant tracking systems”.
Into the void
About 72% of candidates report that the job search negatively affects their mental health, and two-thirds feel burned out before they even land a job, according to recent analysis by The Interview Guys, a job-seeking website.
“It often feels like they’re applying into the void and hearing nothing back,” said Danielle Nicholson, a gen Z career coach. “They’re not even certain if the jobs they’re applying for are real … it’s an extremely disheartening and maddening job market.”
College graduates face especially tough conditions. The unemployment rate for recent grads sits at almost 6% compared with the 4.2% for all workers of any age, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“You shouldn’t have to become an influencer to get a job,” Nicholson said. “But having some kind of professional presence online helps demonstrate that you’re a real person with real skills.”
People who create custom videos and other materials with a strong application will stand out to employers, said Jade Walters, a gen Z career coach.
“If you go above and beyond now, you probably will do the same when hired,” Walters added.
Some gen Zers are taking a step further by using dating apps to build connections and land referrals. About one-third of dating app users say they use it for professional purposes, according to a recent survey by Resume Builder.
‘The cherry on top’
Even if your “Hire Me” video is a hit on social media, that doesn’t mean employment is guaranteed. “Going viral isn’t enough,” Roodnitsky said. “I am a very qualified person and still had to go through a lengthy application process to get my current job.”
And while gen Z tries out bold job-hunting stunts, there are some risks to making quirky “hire me” presentations too.
“Video or decks may highlight a candidate’s misalignment with the employer’s culture, expectations or even industry norms,” Salemi said. And as more candidates use video, it risks losing its novelty. If a candidate decides to create a video résumé it needs to be specific for that industry, role and department, career coaches say.
“Video résumés could be like the cherry on top if the ice-cream is the exact flavor I want,” Rathod said. “It may move the needle only if you have the other exact qualifications they are looking for.”
But many job seekers feel like moving the needle is exactly what they need. Luna Escobar, 20, a student at University of California, Berkeley, applied to nearly 30 internships, spending roughly eight hours per application or about 240 hours in total. Feeling like there was no way to stand out with traditional applications, she posted a video résumé on Instagram.
“After posting the video, I finally heard back from one company after they ghosted me for months with a first-round interview request,” Escobar said. “It definitely might’ve pushed me to the next step. Hopefully I’ll get a summer internship.”
