Best Before Tomorrow

In 2018, I decided to take a break from self-employment and apply for jobs in Marketing and Branding.
I knew the typical corporate recruiter might be initially confused by the eclecticism of my profile. Moreover, some features of the industries I had been working in – namely, TV and live shows, where I had worked as a writer and producer – could be misleading. For instance, someone unfamiliar with the fast pace and short production cycles of work in the TV industry might misinterpret a series of assignments lasting less than a year as restless job-hopping. I needed to prevent potentially interesting employers from overlooking my strong and highly-transferable skillset.

The challenge: positioning a multifaceted profile on a saturated job market.

My professional journey spans across different countries, disciplines, and industries. That makes it potentially hard to fit it within a conventional corporate job title. While my eclecticism had given me a competitive edge in entrepreneurial roles and consultancy, I considered it could stand in the way of landing a corporate job.

Corporate recruiters have little time to select candidates amongst hundreds of applicants, so profiles that are less than straightforward tend to end up in the trash bin. How to get noticed and beat the crowd?

I needed a strategic approach to highlight my strengths as a candidate and optimise my time and energy in the quest. While proud of my unique and diverse professional journey, and of all the things I had learnt along the way, I was aware that my story risked staying untold if with a conventional approach to job hunting. In short, I could not leave it to my CV to describe who I was.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Said some US president (allegedly) and I (definitely)

Strategy (sharpening the axe)

The famous tree-chopping quote is one of my favourite mottos. I love how vividly it describes the importance of understanding, strategy, and preparation – key aspects of my approach to work.

“Sharpening the axe” – read: understanding the problem, strategising an approach, prepare a solution – rather than blindly jumping into action is about working smart, keeping focus on a result-oriented approach. Besides, it’s about knowing what you’re doing and why, using adequate tools. This helps optimising energy and resources to be able to achieve more with less.

In my case, this meant analysing my situation and perspectives. In particular, a simplified SWOT analysis helped me identify threats and opportunities, while positioning my profile relatively to my goal.

STRENGTHS: * Diverse and transferrable skills * Creativity * Multidisciplinarity * Full command of end-to-end processes in Comms * 20+ years of experience * International profile * Prestigious clients	WEAKNESSES: * Complexity: at first glance, profile might look incoherent * Years spent as self-employed might be seen as conflicting with employed work * As Soup As Possible might be misunderstood for a classic food business
OPPORTUNITIES: * Mid-sized companies need M-shaped profiles * Recruiters reward people who go the extra mile rather than submitting cookie-cutter applications * Personal touch go a long way	THREATS: * Skimming: recruiters don’t have time to read between the lines * Automated selections penalising unconventional profiles * Saturated labor market

Personal branding.

My analysis brought me to a clear conclusion: to achieve my goal of receiving a job offer within a few weeks, I should invest in my personal brand.

In particular, a personal branding campaign was strategic to:

• Earn visibility and emerge in a personal and urgent way, compared to other candidates
• Show motivation, determination, and detail orientation
• Demonstrate proficiency in the different aspects of creative marketing and branding
• Convince recruiters that I could ideate and manage multichannel marketing campaigns
• Impress potential employers with a combination of creativity and effective project management
• Prove that I can carry out creative projects from concept to execution.

Personal branding was the easiest way to show that I was knowledgeable, capable, creative, organised. Most importantly, it could show my command of Marketing and Branding techniques while managing complete and complex projects.

As a firm believer of the ‘show, don’t tell‘ golden rule of storytelling, I knew that doing exactly that – showing what I could do – would speak louder than any claims in a conventional cover letter.

“Best Before Tomorrow”: personal branding meets guerrilla marketing

I went all-in with an unconventional approach to job hunting. My applications would take the form of a boutique micro-campaign combining online and offline, multi-sensory elements to surprise recruiters and demonstrate my skills. I created a landing page with a self-promotional video, a card with a QR-code pointing to that landing page, a branded box with homemade meringues. I also baked those meringues. I then mailed the flat boxes to shortlisted job posters, and waited. Out of the first three boxes I mailed, all received praise for the innovative and surprising approach to job hunting, and one earned me a job offer that I accepted.

The breakdown

The card invited the recipient to take a “meringue break” while visiting the landing page. Here, they would watch a video showing three different versions of myself describe the variety of my expertise and skills. The text explained the goal of the campaign: demonstrating my approach to problem solving (in that case, getting someone busy to notice my application) and my ability to manage projects that involved a variety of deliverables, from digital to physical …meringues included!

Assets	Goal	Description
Naming	Highlight one key message and convey urgency in a unique way.	The campaign name “Best Before Tomorrow” was consistent with the perishable goods used in the campaign (the meringues) and implicitly urged to open the box and consume the content as soon as possible.
Visual identity	Demonstrate skills in professional branding and give coherence to the whole campaign.	Logo with the campaign name implemented throughout the deliverables.
Packaging	Deliver the message in a surprising way, while providing a practical solution and reinforcing the visual identity of the campaign.	A flat box designed to be mailed with minimal cost and delivered with regular correspondence featured the sticker-seal “Best Before Tomorrow”, and enticed the recipient to open it to discover its contents.
Card	Call to action.	The card invited the reader to take a meringue break while visiting the website, including a QR-code, link, and contact details.
Landing page	Provide continuity between the offline hook of the campaign and the message embedded in its online part, while enhancing the ‘personal’ approach of the campaign.	The landing page was the reveal moment of the personal branding campaign.
Video	Convey my personality, professionalism, creativity, and experience.	The video shows the different hats I can wear at the same time.