Hacking your dream job: a lesson in lateral thinking

What does a dream job look like, and is it even possible to land one in the real world? Enter Alec Brownstein, an ordinary individual with an extraordinary ambition: a job at a top creative agency. Faced with the challenge of breaking into the industry through conventional means, Alec discovered that the traditional route was not only impractical but close to impossible. Like many others, he had probably exhausted the usual methods, uploading CVs to different websites, sending countless emails and submitting speculative applications, before reassessing his approach and asking whether there might be another way in.

Undeterred, Alec used lateral thinking to identify a unique way to capture the attention of the top creative directors at the agencies he wanted to work for. Specifically, he went after their egos.

The Google Job Experiment unfolded as Alec bought the names of those directors on Google AdWords, ensuring his personalised message would be the first thing they saw when they googled themselves. Imagine the surprise of David Droga, Tony Granger, Gerry Graf, Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone when they stumbled upon an advert addressed to them by name.

The results

The unconventional strategy paid off. Four out of five directors reached out for an interview. Alec ultimately secured a position at Young & Rubicam.

The story is a reminder of what lateral thinking can do with goals that look unattainable through the front door. It is also a reminder that the systems we treat as neutral infrastructure, whether a search engine, a review platform or a recruitment process, are all built by people and can all be read by anyone willing to look closely enough. I wrote about the darker side of that in Liquid modernity.

You can see the original campaign on AdForum.