Say You Used To Work At Victoria’s Secret

Looking for a job sucks. That’s why I started this blog in the first place–to share my wisdom and job hacks to give you the ‘upper hand’ in the process. Every part of the job hiring ritual is designed to suck the life out of you and make you into a conformist worm. The hope is that you’ll have been so beaten down that if you *do* get the job you’ll be willing for whatever meager wage they offer you and generally work your ass off for no good reason. Ironically, the best way to get a job is to break out of this paradigm and take control of the process. Most of this is done at the interviewing phase when you can face the people doing the hiring directly. This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to start manipulating things to your advantage from the moment you apply.

There’s nothing worse than applying to some job that wants you to send in your resume and hope for the best. I once was in charge of doing the hiring for such a gig and every day I’d get dozens and dozens of poor fools sending in their resume, most with an earnest sounding cover letter. Do you really think I gave a rats ass that someone ‘wants to leverage their skills’ and ‘add value’ to my organization? Not likely. Here’s the reality–I’d guess that 90% of the applicants had the requisite skills that qualified them for the gig. So how do you think I selected ten to interview? Simple–I invited the ten applicants with the ten most memorable resumes to come in for the face to face. Having to wade through all of these resumes might not suck as bad as applying for a job but it’s still a miserable ordeal. So too is the prospect of having to feign interest and stay awake while interviewing a bunch of dull morons. Eventually, you’ll have to hire one and then work with them every day. You might as well get someone entertaining, interesting and/or amusing. Besides, in most modern businesses the guy who had the balls to break the expected convention of the interview/cover letter dynamic will be a better employee than the person that grovels and follows the rules.

In other words, you’ve got a vested interest in making your resume memorable. Do it right and you don’t even need to have the necessary qualifications–you will get the interview. And that leads me to today’s job hunt hack. This is so powerful that I feel like a jackass not charging money for it. Properly used, it has a success rate of well over 90%. Do this, and your odds are good that you’ll get the interview because your resume got noticed. You don’t need to be a genius like Norman Einstein to realize that you’ll be well served by ’embellishing’ your resume to appear more interesting than you really are. The problem is that there’s a severe downside risk–that the interviewer will be in a position to call ‘bullshit’ on your claims. You don’t want to claim to have climbed Mount Everest and find out the interviewer is a hard core climber who can expose you. I used to enjoy calling bullshit on people that claimed to be ‘Mensa Members’. Since I actually am a member it was no trouble at all to search for them in the Mensa member directory. The trick is to come up with something that will grab the interviewer’s attention but that can’t be ‘exposed’.

SAY YOU USED TO WORK AT VICTORIA’S SECRET

This works if you’re male or female–just put somewhere on your resume that you once worked at the lowest common denominator of lingerie stores, Victoria’s Secret. If you have a gap in your resume to fill all the better. You don’t need to say you managed it or anything–just put ‘Retail Sales–Victoria’s Secret’. I know what you’re thinking–what if they want to call my former store manager to get a reference. I’m one step ahead of you. The trick is to say you work at a Victoria’s Secret store that has been closed due to poor sales or being in a shitty mall in some dying rust belt town. I’ll give you a few to get started with and you can find even more with a Google search (‘closed Victoria’s Secret stores’):

–Vallco Fashion Park 10123 N Wolfe Rd Cupertino, CA 95014,
–The Grove At Farmers Market 6301 W 3rd St Los Angeles, CA 90036 Mid-Wilshire,
–21 W Colorado Blvd Pasadena, CA 91105,
–24155 Laguna Hills Mall Laguna Hills, CA 92653
–The Marketplace at Steamtown, 300 Lackawanna Ave, Scranton, PA 18503

You may not even need to give any contact information. Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock is aware that the digital revolution in retail has hit Victoria’s Secret and it’s parent company hard resulting in the closing of hundreds of stores. Alternately, you can say that you used to work at Fredericks of Hollywood prior to 2015–that’s when they shut down all of their retail stores to focus on their online platform.

WHY THIS WORKS

Office workers are a simpleminded sort and react like Pavlov’s dog to the mention of the name ‘Victoria’s Secret’. If you’re female, they’ll automatically think you’re a sultry seductress with drawers full of lacy unmentionables. That will turn their thoughts to ones of a more sexual nature and at that point they’re hooked. Your resume just became ‘memorable’ and there’s a strong chance you’ll get called in for an interview. If you’re male, they’ll be envious and want to get you in to interview if for no other reason than to find out what it was like being a dude working in a lingerie store and to hear all of the wild, sordid things that happened there. It’s your responsibility to deliver appropriately steamy recollections. Like your female job applicant counterpart, your resume just become ‘memorable’ if for a tangentially different reason. Now all you need is to nail the interview and we’ve got plenty of hacks to help you with that.