Meet the job seeker who used Snapchat to get noticed by employers

For some, Snapchat is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

But those who know how to wield the ever-growing social app may have an advantage in the working world.

After seeing how geofilters were being used by fashion moguls to advertise locally, Erik Sena, now a social media coordinator in San Diego, tells Business Insider he was inspired to create geofilters in May with his personal brand on them to help him stand out in the oversaturated advertising job market.

"I had been interviewing and sending my résumés to companies for months since the beginning of the semester with no luck, so this was a last ditch effort to get my name out there," he says.

Sena says he used his experience as a copywriter and a designer to quickly whip up his design, and he paid $108 to Snapchat to have them run on-demand geofilters targeted at the ad-companies he wanted to work for.

Snapchat let's you assign an area where you want your geofilter to appear, and whenever someone uses Snapchat in that area, your design shows over messages in the app. Sena targeted BASIC and Red Door Interactive in Downtown San Diego and TBWA\Chiat\Day, Ignition, Deutsch, and R/GA in Los Angeles with his geofilters.

"Thankfully, two of the companies that I tried to reach out to actually took notice," Sena says. "Red Door tweeted a screenshot of my geofilter and actually invited me to the office for lunch."

Sena says one of the associate creative directors at BASIC also liked a couple of his tweets and followed him on Twitter.

"Even though I didn't get a job offer or even an interview from any of the companies I targeted, the least I could have hoped for was to be noticed by them, and I was," Sena says.

Since then, he says he's included the move on his résumé and talks about it during interviews, "which definitely helped generate some conversations."

"In fact, one of the biggest talking points during my most recent interview was this situation, and I was lucky enough to land the job, so I'd say it helped tremendously," Sena says.