- Gen Z is sneaking their resumes into boxes of donuts and waitressing at industry conferences to try and land a gig. And when 25-year-old Sam Rabinowitz realized he wasn’t going to get his dream job by applying to roles the traditional way, he made a custom poster begging for a job, and stood on Wall Street hoping someone would give him a chance. He tells Fortune the stunt was “more than worth it.”
Gen Z undoubtedly got the short end of the stick when leaving college and trying to land a job. The young generation is up against a whole set of unique challenges, from AI automating junior roles and dwindling entry-level opportunities to sifting through a mountain of “ghost” jobs.
To stand out in a competitive market, one Gen Zer even decided to hit the streets of Wall Street with a sign advertising he’s ready to work.
Instead of sticking with a banner on his LinkedIn profile and applying to open roles on the platform, hoping for the best—which he says “sucks” as a strategy—25-year-old Sam Rabinowitz stood out in front of the New York Stock Exchange with a posterboard reading: “Tried LinkedIn. Tried Email. Now Trying Wall Street. Looking for a Finance/Trading Internship or Entry-Level Position. Dedicated. Hungry. Ready to Work.” He spent $136 on the custom board with only $700 left in his checking account.
“I ended up thinking, ‘How do I get my name out there? How can I maybe make this happen in the next week?’ I wasn’t trying to make it happen in a couple months, I was trying to make it happen overnight,” Rabinowitz tells Fortune. “I needed it to happen now—I’m running out of money, it’s the time. When fear and anxiety happens, it just pushes you.”
It had been three years since Rabinowitz graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance from Florida Atlantic University back in May 2022, but the Gen Zer has had no luck landing his dream job after applying to more than 1,000 roles.
Running out of money, he was desperate to finally be given a chance. So he hatched an out-of-the-box plan to finally be seen: he would parade his employment plea around New York’s financial district, when he traveled up from Boca Raton to the city for a wedding over Labor Day weekend this month. And the videos posted to his Instagram and TikTok detailing the stunt have since racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
At the time, he says most people shot smiles of encouragement, but only a handful of people stopped. However, one businessman actually took the bait; a partner at an undisclosed financial firm spoke with Rabinowitz after being intrigued by his message. The Gen Z hopeful says he was even invited up into the person’s office—surrounded by computer screens and statistics, it was a taste of what his dream career could look like as an equity trader.
“I was having fun. Saw the bull—it was a great day. Then a man in a suit walked by. He gave me a little smirk. I said, ‘Hey, I’ll work for free!…Come on, give a young guy a chance.’ He made his way over, and took my resume,” Rabinowitz explains. Later that day, he got a shot at the company. “He thankfully came down to get his lunch and grabbed me. We went up, I got the interview, and we had a great interview.”
What came next for the aspirational Gen Z job-seeker
Rabinowitz tells Fortune that the partner ultimately didn’t hire him. However, he says his Wall Street stunt was “more than worth it,” as other opportunities have since begun pouring in.
Just this week alone, he’s had 10 job interviews—and even companies outside of the hedge fund world, including a startup who saw his potential for a marketing role, reached out to connect. Rabinowitz says his success is thanks in part to other social media accounts sharing his stunt, his friends supporting his wild endeavor, and exposure from a profile in the New York Post.
“Now, I’ve got a little bit of confidence,” Rabinowitz says. “I had nothing before, and regardless if I get a job right away or not, I know my future is bright, and I’m very proud of myself.”
Other than the professional doors the unusual tactic opened, the 25-year-old says it was gratifying to build new peer connections. Many other people his age are going through the very same conundrum, applying to LinkedIn jobs endlessly to no avail. He says his story is reflective of how tough the labor market is, and others resonated with the lengths he went to to finally nail down a chance at a dream career.
“It was really inspiring to connect with a lot of people who went through the same thing as me. I think that’s why it popped off, because it’s just so prevalent in today’s age with the job market,” Rabinowitz says. “Really young grads are having a hard time with AI coming out, taking a lot of those roles away. The system is already hard to begin with.”
Young people’s out-of-the-box strategies to land a job
Parading a sign pleading for a job isn’t the only way young professionals are getting crafty to land a job.
One millennial marketing specialist, Lukas Yla, was having difficulty landing a Silicon Valley job after uprooting his life from Lithuania to San Francisco. So he hatched a bright idea: to sneak his application materials into offices with sweet treats.
Donning a delivery uniform, he spent more than a week hand-delivering donuts in disguise to every company he hoped to work for. Inside the boxes, he included a secret memo: “Most resumes end up in trash. Mine—in your belly,” with his resume and link to his LinkedIn profile. He got 10 interviews from the stunt, but ultimately had to return back to his home country to continue working after failing to secure a U.S. work visa.
Another Gen Z graduate, Basant Shenouda, spent six months messaging recruiters and applying for jobs online before realizing the strategy wouldn’t lead to an opportunity. So she drummed up a plan of action; she volunteered to clean up glasses at an Online Marketing Rockstars conference in Hamburg to gain free entry to the event and network. Shenouda would hand out her CV to 30 to 40 people during her breaks at the event, saying she was hoping for feedback on her materials. She secretly hoped that a recruitment manager would bite—and after a six-month hiring process, it paid off. The Gen Zer ended up landing a sales graduate role at LinkedIn.
“When you’re a graduate you think everyone’s going to say yes to you and things are going [to] work out. But it’s a matter of building up resilience,” Shenouda told Fortune last year. “You need to keep reassessing your process so that every no gets you closer to that next yes.”
Have you resorted to unusual stunts to try and land a job? Fortune wants to hear from you! Email your stories to emma.burleigh@fortune.com
