She wears three pairs of socks to keep her toes warm as she hits the street with her big white placard and purse full of candy canes.

“U of T GRAD FOR HIRE,” reads her sign, which reaches from the pavement up well past her belly button. “TAKE MY RESUMÉ & GET A FREE XMAS GIFT.”

Nothing will stop her, she swears. Xingyi Yan is going to get a job in marketing or advertising.

“I’m a bit desperate,” she admits, speaking with the Star on her “lunch break” at three in the afternoon.

“I will be on the street until I get a job.”

Yan, 21, finished her four-year undergraduate degree in commerce last summer. Since then, she says, hundreds of job applications have only garnered a few interviews, and those have been unsuccessful. Jobless, but determined, she was joking with some friends last weekend that she should just hand out resumés on the street.

“I bought a really big white board and I just used markers to write on it,” she says. “This is my strategy to be a little bit more marketable.”

In advertising herself — her go-to spot is the corner of Bloor and Church Sts. — Yan hopes to grab the attention of some shakers in the ad business or marketing world. In a seasonal flourish, she’s also handing out candy canes to passersby, who she says are mostly supportive, but sometimes gruff.

“Some people look at me and say, ‘What a stupid idea!’” she says, adding that others have bought her hot chocolate and given her food.

Regardless, she’s determined to get her foot in the door of an industry that she feels jives with her personality.

“I really like the creativity in marketing and I think I’m a creative person … I think advertising is (for) me so I decided to pursue advertising no matter how hard it is,” she says.

“This is my way to show my passion.”

As an added incentive to keep the job hunt going strong, Yan mentions she came to Toronto as an international student from Shenyang, a city of 6 million in northeast China. She has a three-year work permit but wants to land a job and apply for permanent residency.

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“My hometown is actually colder than Toronto,” she says. “I want to stay here forever.”

With that, she’s ready to head back out to the street, where you can find her with her sign and candy, until someone decides to hire her.