- Millions of Gen Z are unemployed—and thanks to AI-induced cuts to corporate entry-level roles, landing that first job is about to get tougher. Look no further than the viral donut hack that helped one jobless 25-year-old stand out in Silicon Valley.
We’ve heard from a Gen Zer who waitressed at a major tech conference just to get her CV into the hands of hiring managers and a graduate who cold emailed her dream employers with the subject line, “proposal to hustle”.
Now, another unusual way to grab hiring managers attention is going viral: Sneaking your resume into a box of donuts.
Back in 2016, when Lukas Yla uprooted to San Francisco from Lithuania to chase his big tech dreams, he quickly realized landing a job in Silicon Valley was easier said than done.
Lightning struck while taking a bite into a freshly baked artisanal doughnut. Who could resist opening a box of the tasty treats?
So just like that, the millennial marketing specialist with five years experience under his belt, got to work making a Deliveroo-style uniform, a list of his dream employers and a secret memo for inside the donut boxes. Yla then spent more than a week hand-delivering the donuts to every company on his wish list in the disguise.
“I ended up delivering 50 boxes, addressed to the heads of marketing,” he told the BBC at the time. “Often, the receptionist would immediately pass the doughnuts straight to the recipient. Sometimes, they were called to reception: I could hand over the doughnuts and explain why I was really there.”
When they’d eventually open the box, they’d be greeted with the message: “Most resumes end up in trash. Mine—in your belly,” alongside his resume and a link to his LinkedIn profile. To increase his chances of success, he even leaked the extreme measures he was taking to the press.
The marketing hopeful scored at least 10 interviews. However, he tells Fortune that he failed to secure a work visa and so continued growing his career in Europe and has since worked as a director at Uber’s rival, Bolt.
Years later, Yla’s stunt is going viral all over again. A sign of just how bleak the job market has become, social media users are reviving his resume-in-a-donut-box hack as inspiration for desperate job seekers.
“Brilliant marketing, and a reminder that sometimes breaking the rules (with style) is exactly what it takes,” one Facebook post, which has racked up around 90,000 likes, writes.
Bagging an entry-level role has never been harder—so Gen Z needs to get creative
Millennials are the most educated generation in history, with Gen Z closely following behind. Yet their financial prospects and chances of getting hired are significantly dimmer than those of Gen X graduates.
And athough the landscape of internships has changed, with some offering six-figure salaries—a far cry from the unpaid coffee fetching days millennials (myself included) will remember. Actually landing a foot in the door after school or college is looking increasingly impossible.
Just 10 years ago, 94% of students had either landed work or gone into further education in the one year after graduating, according to data from the U.K. Department for Education. In 2024, just 59% of grads had full-time jobs 15 months after graduating. Many are turning to unemployment benefits to survive.
Likewise, over 4 million American Gen Zers are currently jobless. In China, the government has said that as of February, 1 in 6 young people are unemployed.
It’s no wonder over half (57%) of the class of 2025 reports feeling pessimistic about starting their careers, according to a survey for 1,925 members of the cohort from job platform Handshake. That’s an increase from 49% the prior year.
Gen Z job seekers are getting creative—and it’s working
The Gen Zers who are winning the war for work are thinking outside the box with hacks like Yla’s to gain a competitive edge.
After six months of failed efforts to land a gig, one young job-seeker named Basant Shenouda told Fortune she tracked what conferences recruiters were going to, and volunteered at them to have a chance to hand out her résumés. She ended up landing an internship at LinkedIn.
Another Gen Z candidate, Ayala Ossowski, wore her university’s baseball cap at her pizza joint job, and pitched her experience when customers asked about it. She wound up securing a gig at Cisco.
“The market is so saturated with such incredible talent that it takes some creativity in order to stand out from the crowd,” Ossowski told Fortune.
