From a cardboard sign on the cold pavement to a multi-screened computer in a glistening digital workspace: Xingyi Yan’s Great Depression-like bid to catch on in the 21st-century job market has paid off.

The University of Toronto graduate hit the streets in December clutching a large, white placard, selling herself as an eager candidate for a job in the advertising and marketing industry.

This week, just over a month later, Yan landed a gig as a search analyst at Reprise Media, a youthfully staffed agency with offices around the world that helps big companies feature more prominently online through search engines.

“I feel fabulous,” Yan said in an interview with the Star at her new office, a slick modern space with black-and-white cityscape photographs papered on the walls and conference rooms named after Toronto neighbourhoods. It was her third day on the job, which also happened to be her 22nd birthday.

“I’m more excited to work now, instead of being worried,” she said. “My dream was to work at an ad agency like this. . . This company believes in my potential.

“It’s a happy ending.”

Yan’s drive to find gainful employment in Toronto began last fall, after she finished her undergraduate degree in commerce earlier in the year. She said she had fired off hundreds of job applications but wasn’t getting any bites. To make the stakes even higher, Yan was an out-of-country student from Shenyang, China, who fell in love with Toronto during her years at school. With a three-year work permit in hand, she wanted a job that would allow her to stay in Canada and apply for permanent residency.

By December she made her big play, bought a large whiteboard, bag of candy canes and wrote:

“U of T GRAD FOR HIRE ... TAKE MY RESUMÉ & GET A FREE XMAS GIFT.”

After seven days straight on the frigid winter streets, with skeptics brushing her off and friendly strangers bringing her warm drinks, the job offers started to roll in. She had 14 interviews in the span of a few weeks, before three people from Reprise Media reached out to her online. She went for her 15th interview on Jan. 19.

That’s when she met Joseph McConellogue.

“As soon as we met her, we could feel the energy,” recalled McConellogue, Reprise Media’s managing director. He said he was convinced Yan was the real deal when she went through a Power Point presentation about her street-sign job search gambit.

“We were very impressed with her initiative and her resourcefulness,” McConellogue said. “She took things into her own hands, took a very different approach to finding a job. You don’t see that in a lot of people.”

Usually, McConellogue explained, his company takes its “sweet, sweet time” making hiring decisions, but this was enough to convince them to bring Yan on board as quickly as possible, especially since her old-school job hunt had brought her a lot of attention.

“I knew right away we need to get moving on this. I need to go to HR and get this offer going right away,” he said.

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Yan hopes her story of landing an entry-level job in the field of her dreams will encourage others not to give up, especially if their job hunt seems hopeless.

“You can make it happen,” she says with a smile, “even if you have to do something a little ... unconventional.”