My friend, Matthew Kraft, with whom I roamed the halls in the Casting building at Walt Disney World, recently shared his rather creative job hunting story, and it’s got everything: circumventing ‘traditional’ search tactics, capitalizing on one’s strengths, displaying unbridled optimism, and developing an approach that’s just-so-crazy-it-may-work. Oh, and did I mention beer?

From Matthew, below:

“While I’ve been unemployed,  I’ve gotten into homebrewing beer as a hobby. There’s a robust homebrew community online, and one day someone suggested “Brewmasters” on Netflix. This was a one-season reality show on Discovery about Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Loved the show, because I could finally understand what it was they were doing, or trying to do, with their various brews. It inspired me to go pick up his book, “Brewing up a Business” (on the off chance that I go the entrepreneur route), and that lead to checking their website and their careers page.

Lo and behold, they had an opening for a Director of Marketing! So, I went about my usual routine of polishing my cover letter, making sure the resume said just what i needed it to say, making sure I had the name of the HR person down pat, etc.

Then, inspiration struck: I’m applying for a position at a brewery. And not just any brewery, but one that prides itself in “Off-centered ales for off-centered people” that was started by a guy who loved to homebrew. So I got creative too!

I grabbed a quick 4-pack of the latest brew, created a resume label with the same look of my real resume, printed off a cover letter, and shipped it. As soon as I could see via tracking that it had been delivered, I applied the traditional way, sending an email as their careers page requested. 

I didn’t stop there. (I’m nothing if I’m not persistent.) I posted pics of the label and the beers on FB and LinkedIn, and I checked my social media profiles this morning, that one little picture and blurb has been seen by more than 250 people!”

What do you think of his homebrewed resume? Let him know @ www.linkedin.com/in/kraftmatthew or @MKraft on Twitter.