This Out-of-the-Box Resume Hack Landed One TikToker Her Dream Job (It’s Free!)

The job hunt can be exciting, but it can also be a brutal search, whether you’re early on in your career or a seasoned industry professional. With so much competition, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd, regardless of your impressive resume and credentials.

British TikToker Ashleigh Spili shared a now-viral video that details the creative way she landed her dream job — and the company wasn’t even hiring at the time! And it involves a completely free tool that helped her resume stand out.

Spili explains that she had initially discovered public relations company Emerge on Instagram and immediately fell in love with the female-founded brand’s ethos and values. While the company wasn’t actively hiring, that didn’t deter Spili from reaching out.

“So many companies are considering hiring, but they’ve got so much on and they haven’t had time to put the job advert out,” she says in the video. “But they are actually open to it.”

Rather than waiting for a job listing, Spili sent over her resume. But instead of sending a standard one-pager listing her previous employers and education, she used an out-of-the-box hack to stand out from the crowd.

Spili used the Edit Anything Google Chrome extension, along with graphic design site Canva, to model her resume after the company’s website design. Using the extension, she changed the website text to turn into her resume before screenshotting the page and adding it to Canva for some final tweaks. This clever trick gave her resume a creative boost that used the company’s branding, and the extra time and effort she put into personalizing her application showed her passion for the company.

After sending an email to the company — with the subject line “proposal to hustle” — the founder replied. Spili got invited for coffee with the founder and the associate director to chat about opportunities, which she said was much less stressful than the traditional interview process where you’re going head-to-head with countless other candidates through various stages.

Ultimately, Spili was offered a position at the company. She says using this resume hack “changed her life” and she is incredibly happy in her role. While it’s worth noting that this method won’t work for every company, taking a less traditional approach to your job hunt could help you stand out and get a leg up in a competitive job market.