Student’s video resume has Wall Street howling

updated 1:41 p.m. ET Oct. 16, 2006

Another recruiting year, another job applicant humiliation. This season, Yale senior Aleksey Vayner went far beyond the usual misaddressed e-mail or keyboard-in-mouth embarrassment.

Vayner, an aspiring investment banker, sent a video entitled "Impossible is Nothing" along with an 11-page resume and glamour shot to financial services powerhouse UBS. Within hours scores of investment banks noticed his application, as bankers e-mailed the seven-minute video and turned Vayner into the biggest joke on Wall Street.

As long as there have been job applicants, there have been application gaffes. Today, with e-mail as the preferred mode of corporate communication, that embarrassing camera phone picture or salacious IM to a coworker quickly travels far beyond company walls. So too can a boastful resume or cover letter.

That’s certainly what happened to Vayner. UBS is launching an internal investigation to figure who, if anyone, within the company leaked Vayner’s cover letter, over-the-top resume and video. Regardless of how it ended up in the Internet, Vayner's video has been passed from Bain Consulting, to Barclay's Capital, to Bank of America, even into Congress. The video quickly went viral, traveling from several blogs and onto YouTube, which eventually removed it from its sight, reportedly at Vayner's request.

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In his video, Vayner shows off his varied skills: lifting a 495-pound weight, ballroom dancing to Latin musak, serving a tennis ball at 140 miles an hour, and, as a dramatic conclusion, breaking seven bricks with a karate chop.

"Ignore the losers, bring your A-game, your determination and your drive to the field and success will follow you," advised the budding management guru in his slight Russian accent. "If you want to dance, dance," he says, before expertly waltzing a scantily clad woman around the room.

Vayner probably won't be hired on Wall Street any time soon, but e-embarrassment doesn't have to be career ending, says hiring experts. "You certainly have a reputation," says Richard Castellini Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder.com, "but still being young, someone might take a chance on you."

Vayner isn't the first young employee to become a cyber legend. In 2001, Peter Chung, a 24-year-old Princeton grad working for The Carlyle Group in Korea, detailed his 2001 sexploits with Korean women. "CHUNG is going to f--- every hot chick in Korea over the next 2 years (5 down, 1,000,000,000 left to go)." He resigned soon after the e-mail hit inboxes worldwide.

Younger employees, often devotees on MySpace and reality TV, are predisposed to online missteps in the workplace, says Castellini. "Voyeurism is an aspect of their lives," he says, "and they don't understand the ramifications of it." Employers often check out potential hires on social networking sites, so consider deleting that picture of you funneling beer or flashing the camera. "What we tend to tell our students about using new technologies," says University of Pennsylvania Career Services Director Patricia Rose, "is beware."

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