Marta Puerto was just one of thousands of job seekers struggling to stand out in a cooling job market – and losing hope. Her fortunes reversed with a 1 minute and 42 second long video posted on LinkedIn.
Instead of relying on the standard resume to present herself to employers, the Madrid-based marketing manager decided to try telling her story in a different way, showcasing her skills by doing marketing herself.
The video went viral, with over 60,000 likes on LinkedIn and growing, and caught the attention of hundreds of employers. Puerto said it is inundated with interview requests from companies and has received more than 5,000 connection requests on the platform.
This Spanish PMM got fired, so she made this video to stand out in the job market and I love it. LinkedIn is broken! pic.twitter.com/emnEKVe68a
—✍️👩🍳🤹♀️ (@noheriye) March 1, 2024
“I really thought maybe 100 or at most 200 likes from my network,” he said in an interview. “And now I’m getting contacts from previous recruiters who told me no. And now they say ‘Oh, now I want a piece of Marta.'”
As layoffs continue and white-collar workers lose influence in the job market, standing out among hundreds of qualified candidates has become increasingly difficult. This is especially true as companies turn to artificial intelligence to screen candidates, making it more difficult to present applications to hiring managers.
After being fired from fintech company Xolo in October, Puerto submitted dozens of applications, but received mostly automated emails in response and found it difficult to move to the next step in the process. Dozens of automatic rejections began to weigh on her. She did well once she got to the interview, but it was almost impossible to get there.
“It was the first barrier I couldn’t overcome,” she said. “And so I thought, ‘Okay, I have to do something.’”
Just minutes after the 29-year-old posted the video Wednesday, titled “Meet Marta: The Movie,” she said a former colleague now at another company messaged her asking if he could interview her next week. After that, the messages started arriving. She had to create a separate email inbox just to handle the volume of requests.
Some employers offered to pay for her relocation. “The interview I had today wanted me to move to London and I said no,” Puerto said. “But then they said, ‘Okay, we talked to the CEO, you could be remote, that’s fine.’”