J-student inundated with job offers after resume ends up on The Huffington Post

Like any ambitious j-student on the cusp of graduation, Chris Spurlock was hunting for jobs and trying to make a name for himself. Until one day fame fell into his lap.

Spurlock is a convergence journalism major at the Missouri School of Journalism, but his true passion is designing infographics. Using this 2008 resume by Mike Anderson as inspiration, Spurlock hopped on Illustrator one night and doodled for a few hours. The next morning, he realized his doodles from the night before had potential.

This was the end result, save for a few edits — Spurlock’s friend Rob Bratney, a photojournalism major at Missouri, advised him to ditch his old multicoloured scheme in favour of one that uses gradating shades of blue.     

Spurlock debuted the new and improved resume on his portfolio website. The University of Missouri’s j-school blog,  J-School Buzz, got wind of this and posted an image of Spurlock’s creation on their website, calling it the “coolest student journalism resume ever.” Thanks to a content sharing agreement with J-School Buzz, Spurlock’s resume made it on to The Huffington Post.

Since the HuffPo shout-out, Spurlock’s website has seen a sizable uptick in page views: 8,000 since his resume went viral, 2,500 of which are unique visitors.

That’s not all: the soft job offers started rolling in, reports J-School Buzz in a follow-up interview with Spurlock. A few offers came from noteworthy print and online news organizations. Spurlock won’t name names, but says they asked him to “keep them in mind” during his search and advised him to “stay in touch.”

If you want to take a page from Spurlock’s book, he has a few tips in yet another Huffington Post article.