This college student is using a Snapchat geofilter to land an agency job

By Digiday • May 10, 2016 •

From universities to agencies, Snapchat geofilters are emerging as the recruiting tool of choice — if you’re hunting for the type of employee likely to be active on the platform.

And now, a college student from San Diego has created his own on-demand geofilter to help him land his dream agency job.

Erik Sena, a 22 year-old advertising student from San Diego State University, rolled out his geofilter targeting agencies in San Diego and Los Angeles’ Playa Vista belt, including BASIC Agency, Red Door Interactive, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Deutsch, Ignition and R/GA.

The geofilter consists of Sena’s full name in a stylized font on top, with the words “Digital Provocateur” as well as “Copywriter,” the title he is gunning for, at the bottom. The geofilter will run around BASIC and Red Door Interactive San Diego office until 5 p.m. today and in Playa Vista between 12 and 1 p.m.

“It sounds clichéd, but I literally dreamed about it,” Sena said. “I saw an on-demand geofilter by streetwear brand The Hundreds before taking a nap and woke up with the idea.”

Sena graduates this weekend and said that most of his friends already had jobs lined up and he was stressing out, so this was a last-ditch attempt to land something quickly. He created the on-demand filter after his attempt to create an unpaid community filter wasn’t approved, spending $108 in total out of his savings.

“I like to do things differently and break the mold,” he said. “I would like to believe I lived up to the spirit of actually being disruptive by doing this.”

Sena may be the first active job-seeker in the industry to resort to Snapchat geofilters, but isn’t the only one. Space150 tried to hire interns by using Snapchat geofilters, and most recently 180LA tried to poach employees at some agency competitors as well as Google, Facebook and Buzzfeed to nab a social media manager. Universities including New York University and Drake University have too used geofilters to recruit students.

Sena’s geofilter doesn’t have a call-to-action, or any way by which any agencies who notice him can contact him. So he’s following up through Twitter. Luckily for Sena, BASIC and Red Door Interactive have discovered him and taken note. While an employee from BASIC liked his initial tweet talking about his takeover, Red Door lauded him in the tweet below.