Last week, we saw Thai students shaking things up at their graduation ceremonies, with several students opting to cross-dress as women. The bizarre trend looks set to continue in the Far East as a Chinese student chose his graduation speech as the moment to ‘come out of the closet’.
In a brave move, Finance and Economics student Huang Darun Sheldon broadcast to hundreds of his fellow graduates and his teachers that he is gay. He encouraged them to ‘dare to be different’ in the closing words of his speech at Guangdong University:
“The aim of our lives is not to become Bill Gates, Obama or Hu Jintao, or who our parents expect us to be. We have to become our own person. Stop looking at others' lives and look at yourself. We are all different and have to pursue our own lives. Everyone can be successful, because everyone should have their own definition of success.”
You too can dare to be different when it comes to finding a job. It turns out that the conventional CV and sharp suit isn’t the only way to snap up a graduate position.
Chat to strangers - Remember when your parents told you to never to speak to strangers? Good – now wipe it from your memory (within reason). It can actually be positive to ‘get yourself out there’ and see what comes out of it.
Find part-time work while you job hunt - It is not impossible for employers to hire the person waiting on their table at a restaurant. Employers are constantly on the lookout for new talent so good customer service – or showcasing another valued skill – may be your route into a new job.
Go wild - Some more extreme and pretty daring methods of job hunting have surfaced in recent years, in the form of candidates sending a CV wrapped as a present, with a note stating that their skills are a “gift to the company” and sending a CV in a shoe in order to “get a foot in the door”. Genius!
With the job market tougher and more competitive than ever before, you may feel that resorting to extreme tactics is necessary to get noticed and provide you with a choice of graduate jobs.
While extreme job hunting may get you noticed, it should be carried out with a degree of professionalism so that you stick in their memory for all the right reasons.