30 Effective Ways to Stand Out During the Hiring Process

You were somehow selected for an interview out of the 250 other applicants. You got through the first interview, it went pretty well (or so you hope), and now you just have to wait for the next stages in the hiring process. How can you stand out amongst the other candidates at this point? 

Most blogs will tell you to send the recruiter a brief handwritten thank you note. This is wrong. Thank you notes are boring and overdone. You have the chance to be creative and set yourself apart from the other candidates. A simple, original gift sent to the recruiter might just be the thing. 

Here are some gift ideas that we practically guarantee will land you the job. We assure you that nobody in the history of job interviews has ever sent one of these gifts to a recruiter, thus, you will be 100% original and rad for doing so.

1. A cake with “hire me” written on it
2. A singing telegram
3. A crisp $100 bill
4. A potato with “hire me” written on it
5. A none pizza with left beef (bonus points if the beef spells out “hire me”) 
6. Diamonds
7. A stripper (bonus points if he/she has a boombox that plays nothing but “Cotton Eyed Joe”)
8. An Edible Arrangement (made of edibles)
9. 50 cans of Chef Boyardee
10. A 96 ct pack of Crayola Crayons
11. A set of steak knives from your cousin’s pyramid scheme
12. A Bop-it
13. A subscription to The New Yorker to show them how smart u r (bonus points if they didn’t hire you and the unread magazines pile up on their desk month after month, so every time they see the ever-increasing magazine stack, they are ridden with the guilt of not being cultured enough and rue the day that they chose not to hire you, a cultured person.)
14. A Vintage Billy Ray Cyrus 1998 World Concert Tour SIGNED Tshirt
15. A Billy Ray Cyrus Hand Signed Autographed Electric Guitar
16. A bouquet of flowers with a cute little note containing some inside joke from the interview that makes them chuckle and smile thinking about you and how cute and funny u r
17. The lease to a new Honda Civic
18. A box of essential oils from your high school friend’s pyramid scheme
19. String cheese
20. An edible arrangement (made of string cheese)
21. A subscription for ugly produce
22. An ant farm
23. A tiny Edible Arrangement for their ant farm (This only works if you have previously given them an ant farm. We recommend gifting the ant farm after the first interview and the tiny ant farm edible arrangement after the second interview.) 
24. Goopglow 15% glycolic acid overnight glow peel
25. Kidz Bop 40 on vinyl 
26. A fainting goat
27. A pack of fresh white socks 
28. A venus fly trap
29. Harry Styles
30. Their portrait painted by the ghost of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Send the gift of your choosing straight to the office address, and that recruiter will be calling you in no time with a job offer! Please note: these aren’t bribes. They’re gifts.

Got any job interview follow-up tips? Which one of these gifts would you like try sending? Comment below!