That’s one way to sweeten up a possible employer.
North Carolina job-seeker Karly Pavlinac Blackburn attempted to stand out from other applicants by sending Nike a cake with an edible resume printed on top of it earlier this month.
The 27-year-old detailed the creative pitch on a now viral LinkedIn post where she explained the cake would be sent the same day Nike was celebrating its Just Do It Day on Sept. 8.
“They are not currently hiring for any positions on that team, but I wanted to find some way for the team to know who I was. What better way than to send a cake to a big party,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
“How could I get an edible resume on top of a cake delivered to a party (I wasn’t invited to), to THE team I wanted it to go to, from North Carolina all the way to Beaverton, Oregon,” she added.
Blackburn was recently laid off, which led to her interest in working for Nike, according to KGW8.
She ordered the cake from Albertsons Grocery Store through Instacart where she linked up with driver Denise Baldwin who was in charge of dropping the cake off in the right hands.
“I knew navigating Nike’s large campus was a feat, but combine a giant party with tons of people on top of that adds another layer of complexity to this delivery,” Blackburn explained. “I talked to Denise on the phone and she said to me, ‘Karly I know this is important to you, and I will do whatever IT takes to get this cake to where it needs to be.’”
Baldwin was originally asked to leave the cake at the front desk, but she insisted that she promised Blackburn the dessert and resume would reach exactly the right person, according to the LinkedIn post. She navigated the sprawling Nike campus “all while having a sleeping child in one arm and a one-half sheet cake in the other,” according to the post.
Baldwin, a mother of three with a fourth on the way, told Today she eventually connected with the Nike employer Blackburn wanted to reach. She even asked him to take a photo with the cake to confirm he received it.
“He said to me, ‘Oh, a cake, it’s too nice for me to cut it into.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty awesome the way she thought of putting her resume. It’s kind of what Nike needs: thinking out of the box and initiative,” Baldwin explained to Today.
Blackburn said on LinkedIn her quirky mission inspired Baldwin to job hunt as well, and according to Today, even helped Baldwin set up her own resume page on the job-seeking site.
Blackburn told the television show she’s connected with someone at Nike and has a few upcoming meetings in her job search.
“Now that this has happened, there are a bunch of companies that are kind of involved in the process,” she told Today.
“So I’m just trying to figure out where I fit in, what’s the right fit culture-wise, and a company that has a good mission and is doing something great not just within their product, but for other people.”
