Marta Puerto was just one of thousands of job seekers struggling to stand out in a cooling labor market – and losing hope. Her fortunes reversed with a 1 minute, 42-second-long video posted to LinkedIn.
Instead of relying on the standard resume to introduce herself to employers, the Madrid-based marketing manager decided to try to tell her story a different way, showcasing her skills by marketing herself.
The video has gone viral, with over 60,000 likes on LinkedIn and counting, and has captured the attention of hundreds of employers. Puerto said she’s now being inundated with interview requests from companies and received over 5,000 connection requests on the platform.
“I really thought maybe 100 or at most 200 likes from my network,” she said in an interview. “And now I’m getting connections from previous recruiters that had said no to me. And now they’re like ‘Oh, now I want a piece of Marta.'”
As layoffs continue and white-collar workers lose leverage in the job market, standing out among hundreds of qualified applicants has become increasingly difficult. That’s especially true as companies turn to artificial intelligence to vet candidates, making it more challenging to get applications in front of hiring managers.
After being laid off from fintech company Xolo in October, Puerto submitted scores of applications, but she mostly received automated emails in reply and found it hard to get to the next stage of the process. Â
Dozens of automatic rejections began to weigh on her. She did well once she got to an interview, but it was nearly impossible to get there.
“It was the first barrier that I couldn’t break through,” she said. “And so I thought, ‘Okay, I have to do something.'”
Just a few minutes after the 29-year-old posted the video on Wednesday, captioned “Meet Marta: the movie,” she said a former coworker now at another company messaged her asking if he could interview her next week. After that, the messages began pouring in. She had to set up a separate email inbox just to handle the volume of requests.
Some employers have offered to pay for her to relocate. “The interview I had today wanted me to relocate to London and I said no,” Puerto said. “But then they said, ‘Okay, we spoke with the CEO, you could be remote, that’s fine.'”
