Johnston Grad’s 'Lego Me' Internship Resume Causing Viral Stir

In the fiercely competitive race for summer internships, how do college students get noticed?

In the case of Leah Bowman, a 2011 graduate of Johnston High School, the answer was to grab a bucket of Legos.

Bowman created “Lego-Me” to send out with applications for a summer internship, hoping that will make her stand out from the crowd. She expects to graduate from Northwestern University in December with a degree in communications studies, anthropology and integrated marketing.

"I've been applying to lots of summer internships this spring break," Bowman told The Huffington Post. "I wanted to send out something of my own that would really highlight and differentiate me as a candidate."

She did that and more with her playful “Build the Perfect Account Service Intern” application. It comes with “Leah Intern” Lego pieces and highlights applicable skills.

Her post about it on the social media site Reddit went viral, landing on the site’s front page and garnering 56,700 page views in just six hours. From HuffPo to ABC News to The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom to – well, who really knows where viral traffic will go next? – Bowman doesn’t have to worry about getting noticed.

She told HuffPo that the idea for her Lego  doppelgänger came from a request from an ad agency to “create a piece of persuasive advertising with you as the product" for an application to a summer internship.

So far, she’s yet to hear back from any potential employers who received the kit, but the comments on Reddit are encouraging.

"If it don't get you your dream job I would be extremely surprised," wrote one Redditor after seeing Bowman's Lego creation.

Another commenter gave her kudos for creativity and savvy and thinks future employers will focus on her longer and recognize the brainstorming potential that went into creating the kit.

“... You obviously played the whole mind game with this for a while,” the commenter wrote. “It shows that you are extremely meticulous and highly organized. If you don’t get your dream job, I would be extremely surprised. …”

At Johnston, Bowman graduated in the top 3 percent of her class with a 4.13 grade point average on a 4.0 scale, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was selected as an “AP Scholar of Distinction” for her outstanding scores in Advanced Placement classes, and also for participation in the National Conference on Youth Leadership.