This inventive way to use Snapchat landed one student his dream summer internship

Graham Allgood

It was only fitting that Graham Allgood received his summer internship offer from Horizon Media via Snapchat.

After all, that's how he attracted their attention in the first place.

Business Insider first reported about Allgood's Snapchat creativity on May 12, after Allgood had already first been turned down by the company.

He'd been looking for an internship since Christmas, only to find his emails unreturned or résumé shoved into piles.

"Honestly my story to find a summer internship is fairly familiar with lots of other college students. I am an eager student who, at the end of the school year, found myself crashing on a friend’s couch, surviving on PB+J’s, and spending all my free time pursuing the optimal internship; somewhere, somehow," Allgood wrote to Business Insider in an e-mail.

That's when he decided to do something different to stand out from the crowd.

He turned to Snapchat and designed his own geofilter to run an advertising campaign to promote himself as a great hire to the employees of Horizon Media, the largest stand-alone ad agency in the US.

Geofilters on Snapchat target a specific location and can be overlaid on a photo. In Allgood's case, he designed the Horizon name to appear alongside his at the bottom of the screen with a small "Hey Hire Me" square at the top.

He knew that the company posted photos and videos from inside the office on Tuesdays, so he spent $30 to target the company. And it definitely caught the company's attention.

"I could've run an ad campaign through Twitter and they probably wouldn't have noticed," Allgood said. "I think the interactive way to do the marketing for this résumé is the only reason it worked so well."

At the time, Horizon Media said it didn't have space in the program, so they initially turned him down, but behind the scenes, the company was trying to find him a spot. On May 17, Horizon Media offered Allgood a social-media internship — via Snapchat, of course. Allgood accepted and is headed to New York City for the summer.

"Obviously, to get noticed in today’s market, it requires more than just a resume," Allgood told Business Insider. "Here is my encouragement: It is never too late to end up where you wanted to start."

NOW WATCH: A college student declared her love on Snapchat and captivated the whole campus