Looking for a job via a self-shot video, we did pay attention to this on this blog and www.werf-en.nl. In the Netherlands, at least, there were quite a few examples of it. But as much reach as smiling Marta Puerto managed to generate with it? That will be a rare gift. In the first 3 days, she managed to get more than 1 million views, resulting in “hundreds of requests” from employers to come and have a chat.
In 3 days, Marta already managed to get more than 1 million views on her video.
A nice boost for the 29-year-old marketer, with experience in B2C and B2B, who was laid off from her previous job at fintech company Xolo in October, and has since made all kinds of frantic attempts to find something new. So far, however, without results. That will no doubt change after the viral video she shot with the cooperation of her last employer, the video production company Filmograma.
The medium is the message
Marta Puerto, who also worked for a while in Liege, Belgium, speaks six languages: Spanish, Catalan, English, French, Portuguese and Italian. In her video, the marketing manager addresses her audience mainly in English, but other languages also pass by. The video is so good, that it is fairly widely acknowledged, precisely because it so beautifully links the medium of communication with the profession she wants to enter. The medium is the message, good old Marshall McLuhan would say.
And all this even though she is actually very shy, she tells herself and finds it “extremely embarrassing” to talk about herself. ‘But people who know me also know that I don’t just give up.’ And so, after ‘countless letters of application’, often without even any response, she came to this result, also backed by a brand new website. For the video, by the way, she took on a lot herself: from idea to concept, script (including the already legendary ‘Free trial ended. Book an interview’), and location scouting to publication and distribution.
The future of the CV
On the internet, reactions to the exactly 1-minute and 42-second video are generally laudatory. ‘This is the future of the CV in times of GenAI,’ reads one example. ‘After all, this really shows a person’s true potential.’ Another states that all the employers who have rejected her in recent months would now be pulling the hair out of their heads in regret.
She herself, however, did not expect all the attention. ‘I had thought I might get 100 to 200 likes on it, from my own network.’ After 1 day, however, the counter was already well over 80,000 likes. She had also received 5,000 connection requests at the same time. ‘I am now even getting requests from recruiters who rejected me before. They all suddenly want a piece of Marta now,’ she said in an interview.
One employer even asked her to move to London.
In fact, it took only minutes after she posted the video for the first response to come in: a former colleague who now works at another company asked her for a job interview the following week. But it didn’t stop there. In fact, it rained so many requests that she opened a separate mailbox for it. One employer even asked her to move to London, and after consulting with the CEO adjusted to: ‘OK, we also don’t mind if you want to work remotely from Madrid.’
Implications
The viral video CV, which was titled Meet Marta: The Movie, has quite a few implications for the future of recruitment, according to reports here and there. ‘It raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the traditional interview process in a world where it is precisely digital presence and creativity that are important to one’s career prospects and are becoming the new currency of success,’ reads one analysis. ‘If more individuals take a cue from Marta, and start creating this kind of content to demonstrate their skills, companies will have to rethink and start adjusting their recruitment strategies.’
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