In 2012, I graduated from university with a first-class degree in Media Production and the same problem most graduates with a BA face: I had no idea what to do next. I thought I wanted a job in TV and was sending out countless applications, repeatedly rewriting my CV, and hearing nothing back. I decided to try something different to get my foot on the ladder.
I used the last of my savings (this part was true but the fact that I was unemployed wasn’t, sorry) to rent a billboard in London with a big picture of my face, my web address, and a very clear message: “Employ Adam.”
The billboard itself went up in Shoreditch, and within hours people started snapping photos and sharing it online. Soon, TV, newspapers and radio stations were calling me for interviews. The website I’d built to host my CV received hundreds of thousands of visits every day. Emails began pouring in from people all over the world: job offers, advice, words of support, and, of course, people calling me a wanker.
Eventually, I was offered a job as a Viral Producer for KEO Digital, the digital arm of the production company behind shows like River Cottage and Skint. There, I produced video content for the River Cottage YouTube channel, Crowdfunder.co.uk, and Dignity in Dying.
Photo credit: KEO Films
A month after getting a job, To show my gratitude to everyone who shared my website I decided to take the highly original step of hiring a billboard:
Bizarrely, pictures of the billboards still get posted with astonishing regularity on websites like LinkedIn and Reddit by weird loners farming for likes and upvotes. Maybe that’s why you’re on this page now, who knows?
STATS
- Over 50,000,000 views since launch.
- Mainstream media coverage from every daily national newspaper in the UK as well as interviews on Sky News, Daybreak, ITV News, BBC Radio 1, BBC 5Live, Capital FM and countless others.
- The #EmployAdam hashtag trended on twitter several times during the campaign. I didn’t count how many but I swear it did.
