French woman finds job by strapping CV to back - and going for a run

A freshly-graduated 23-year-old found a long-term job in France in one week by strapping her CV onto her back via a QR code and going for a run.

Manon Brandt, who is training for a triathlon, came up with the idea while swimming last March. She went straight home, worked on her laminated poster, made a QR code and went for a run, she told The Connexion.

She only needed to go on one.

The run was recorded and posted on the social media TikTok. The video generated 250,000 views in one week before her story was published online by a newspaper.

Her phone started ringing and interview offers poured in.

She got 10 interviews from different companies, and was offered two CDI jobs as a communications officer as a result. She started on May 21 at Alexis Assurances, an insurance company specialised in renewable energies, in the north of Lyon (Rhône-Alpes).

“I started a marketing campaign for myself,” she said, having graduated with a Master’s in digital communication at Lyon III university. “I created my own visuals, I completed a physical action next to a target audience and I relayed the information on several platforms and press articles’.

In fact, she was even asked by a communications university professor if she was happy to be used as a real-life case study.

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Ms Brandt’s idea helped her bypass classic job-hunting avenues, which job-market newcomers can find extremely difficult to navigate.

Finding a first job after graduation takes from six to eight months on average, several studies report, but it does not take into account the type of contract nor the differences in fields.Most (75%) of graduates with a Master's are employed after six months and 88% after 12 months with 70% of them in CDI positions, according to a 2023 report.

But it often takes even longer in certain fields, such as communications, which is often referred to as a “dead-end” sector.