How I got Interviewed by Fiverr Without Sending a Resume

If you are passionate about the Tech sector you have probably dreamed at least once of being a Googler, of being part of the team that will launch the next iPhone or working on the next feature of an app with millions of users.

But the real question is another one: what are you doing to work in the company of your dreams? Most of those looking for a job send copy and paste CVs, or at most, they personalize them with some keywords or reference to the referred company.

Result? More than 99% of resumes are discarded and only a lucky (and very talented) elected few can boast even simply that they have earned an interview with one of these companies.

Honestly, I am convinced that a person who wants to work in the Marketing and Business Development sector should be able to do marketing of themselves. It is precisely this idea that prompted me to create a project that could capture the attention of company I love.The following article is my short story, with all my considerations and some suggestions for the job-seekers who are looking for inspiration.

Target Company

Probably some would think that this is yet another attempt to work at Google. Obviously, I wouldn’t mind working in Cupertino at all, but a project with this goal is pretty obvious, and the chances of going viral and achieving a good result would be relatively low.

The achievable goals could be two:

1. “Target” company that is the company for which I created the super resume
2. Other companies that have read about this story and that may be interested in a Growth Hacker 😉

Ok, but which company to choose? Here is a list of the criteria I used to select the company to contact and which of course you can also use for your future projects

I must love it: even if in some cases it could have been easier to capture the attention of individual companies that did not interest me very much, I decided that the essential parameter of my research had to be high interest in that company.

Big Enough: There are hundreds, if not thousands, of exciting companies and startups, but many of them are small in size. 
New employees could represent a not negligible expense and therefore the difficulties of being hired, despite the exciting profile and the excellent impression, would be higher.

Famous brands: in order to help the viral factor of the story

No repetitions: do you remember the case? Obviously targeting a company like Airbnb would seem like a repeat of a past success story.

Other features that could decree the perfect target:

Social approach: an antiquated or too “serious” company would hardly respond to a tweet, a tag or such approaches. This would defeat my effort.

They have opened an exciting job position: this criterion, however, is obviously more important if the company in question is small, while in the case of giants with thousands of employees, it is not so crucial.

The founder is social: as in Nina’s case, the fact that the Founder or other prominent figures such as the CMO are active in social networks increases the chances of attracting their attention or even getting a response

Considering these characteristics, my choice fell on Fiverr, the famous platform where you can buy services from Freelancers from all over the world, starting from $5.I love the services they offer, their expansion in recent years and their founder, , is active on Twitter (perfect!) 🎉

Resume

Once the company has been defined, it is time for the actual project.
Over the last few years, several examples of viral resumes have accumulated (such as the one inspired by the Amazon or Google page) or real sites dedicated to your CV.

Obviously, more complex projects could lead to more buzz and are more difficult to imitate in the future or to have already been launched in the past.In general, an analysis of three main elements should be made:

Skills: I worked as a Front-end developer, and therefore creating entire sites is not a problem. So in my case, it was pretty obvious such a project.

Time: it’s August, with days when I was practically 100% free so that I could have taken care of more details and various strategies.

Budget: I was ready to invest in this project, but given the skills and time available there was no particular need.

In the case of other people, the answer to these three questions could be very different: it is, therefore, useful understanding your condition and try to produce the best result based on your characteristics and possibilities.

What to do?

The essential concept was to be able to offer useful information to Fiverr so as not to show their skills and experiences but become useful for the expansion of the company.I could have suggested new markets (like Nina), new products and features, or new Marketing strategies in contexts or geographic areas not yet fully explored and the latter was the final decision.In July, Fiverr published a communication announcing the expansion in the Italian and Dutch markets.At the same time, they published a very interesting job position concerning the Italian market (it seems to be perfect for my case).At this point, it was clear the possible topic and the help I could provide to the company: the expansion in Italy, with particular data and above all marketing activities that could only be suggested by an “insider”, such as those of Influencer Marketing.

How to do it

As mentioned previously, thanks to my previous knowledge and experience, I would be able to write code for a nice site, but the question would be in this case: is the written code really that important?

The answer to this question is NO. The important thing remains the concept, so I realized that it would be much better saving time using some online tools and focus on the actual content of the site itself.

Personally I used Clickfunnels, a tool used for Marketing Funnels, honestly quite expensive, but you can take advantage of their 14-day trials.

Content

The content, as previously written, would be focused on advice on why to expand more in Italy and some strategies on how to do it.

Inserting data is foundamental for me: I would like to show my analytical approach and my effort in the research of useful stats to support what I am going to suggest.

In this regard, I used Statista and other selected articles online.

After having illustrated the Italian situation from different points of view, I decided to bring my suggestions to the Marketing part.One of the approaches that are working the most for Fiverr is Influencer Marketing, and it is precisely in this sector that a native person can help most.For this reason, I have defined a series of Influencers on YouTube who could attract both clients and freelancers, dividing them by category and with some more detailed information on each Influencer considered.The last part of the site would have been more focused on my presentation, with a final call to action to read more information or get in touch with me directly.

Design

The design should have been particularly inspired by Fiverr, both for a visual issue and to demonstrate to the company my knowledge of the details of their platform.I could have done it with Photoshop, modifying the images or directly the site code to adjust various text and graphic elements (I’ve used the second approach).One example is this screenshot:I’ve added another particular element that I could use in other situations, like in my Tweets, and with a high possibility to bring the attention of the founder. Below you can see the amazing cartoon style illustration made by my sister (I am not able to draw).If you are wondering why is dressed like a pilot, the reason is that I understood that he loves f1 and racing in general.This is the final result: 🎉

Show it to the World

I had two targets:

• The first target is to show it to the Fiverr team
• The second one is going viral, receiving offers from other companies too

How to do it?

I could have done it with Photoshop, modifying the images or directly the site code to adjust various text and graphic elements.
This result is not so obvious, but certainly not impossible.

Considering my past experiences I know that a single method is not enough, so you have to think about different strategies. Here is my list:

• Social
• Outreach
• Various
• Social

Social networks would give the opportunity to go viral, but which social network to focus on?

Considering the type of project and the activity of the CEO, I decided that the best tool would be Twitter. However, unfortunately, I have never actively used this platform, so I found myself having to learn the language and strategies to use.

The person to mention was obviously the founder, Micha Kaufman, but how and when to do it?In order to find out when to post, I tried to figure out when Micha was online. This data is not available, but I have been attempting to guess his habits by studying his past activities.In order to do that I’ve used the tool (thanks to ).

Analysis of with Once I understood the habits (and the right time), I decided to publish the tweet by inserting an impressive image.

Outreach

In case twitter wasn’t enough, I decided to find the emails of some team member with enough power to be able to reach the CEO without problems or to organize a call independently.

Various

I decided to apply to the previously mentioned job position, inserting a document that mentioned this site instead of the usual resume.

After the launch

After a few hours from the launch of the tweet, I received the notification that the account had clicked a like on my tweet.This meant that the Fiverr Team had seen the message and probably had visited the site.After some hour, I’ve received another like, by , expansion director at Fiverr.After some hour, this is the result on my inbox…

As you can read, there are no relevant roles open for me at the moment, but… there is an interview for me and this is great.

Now I hope two things: to inspire other people with this article and, obviously, to go viral and receive offers from other amazing companies too 😉