Driven to great lengths: The strangest things young grads have done to get a job

An unemployed graduate has advertised her CV in a taxi in a desperate attempt to land an interview - but is this the weirdest gambit anyone has tried to get noticed?

Emma Clifford graduated in June; three months later and she’s still looking for an interview – never mind a job.

The English literature graduate of Canterbury Christchurch University got a 2:1, but after sending out a CV a day since her exams in May, but she’s only had a single interview.

“Since my exams in May I’ve been trying to send out a CV a day," says Emma. "I’ve only had one interview, and afterwards they told me they’d filled the post. When I asked for feedback they never even got back to me.”

She says that her dream job would be in marketing or in publicity.

Having graduated in June, Emma was already job hunting. However, the response was less than encouraging. “It’s really hard to determine what I’m doing wrong or right,” she said, “I never expected to walk out of uni and into a great job, and I’m willing to work my way up from the bottom, but there’s just so many of us  - so it is hard.”

Click here for a gallery of unusual job applications

Graduate employment is rising; with the figure of unemployed 16-24 year-olds climbing back to just under a million this month.  

Emma’s advert is underneath the fold-down seats in the back of London black cabs. She hopes that the advert will be noticed by prospective employers as they travel.

She got a friend to help her with the design, and although the advert is only in the single taxi at the moment, Emma says she’ll try and expand the advert if she doesn’t hear anything. “There’s lots of support, but it’s only been a week, so its early days.”

She came up with the idea after visiting London Book Fair, where she was told that graduates need to think of new and inventive ways to stand out from the crowd. As she left she noticed the taxis, and thought ‘why not?’ she said.

Emma’s decision follows in the footsteps of other enterprising unemployed graduates, who faced with a series of dismissals are turning to more unusual ways of getting a job.