With his name and image appearing on the “Today” show, in The New York Post and all over the Web site Gawker, Aleksey Vayner may be the most famous investment-banking job applicant in recent memory. But he says his new celebrity is less blessing than curse.
“This has been an extremely stressful time,” Mr. Vayner, a senior at Yale University, told DealBook over steak in a northern New Jersey restaurant Thursday.
It was his first face-to-face meeting with a reporter since an 11-page resume and elaborate video clip that he submitted to securities firm UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner’s athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.
Mr. Vayner is not amused. Instead, he said he feels like a victim. The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in certain cases, threatening him. Since the video surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Vayner said he has deleted at least 2,000 pieces of e-mail.
It was Mr. Vayner’s highly produced video that appears to have make his job application such a viral sensation.
A Zen-like koan — “Impossible is nothing” — introduces the seven-minute clip, which shows Mr. Vayner performing various feats of physical strength and skill, interspersed with inspirational maxims. Viewers are presented with images of Mr. Vayner bench-pressing weights (a caption suggests it is 495 pounds), playing tennis (firing off what is said to be a 140 mile-per-hour serve) and performing martial arts (he breaks seven bricks with his palm).
The tone of the video seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible. After sharing the clip, fellow students at Yale began to share their favorite Aleksey-style tall tales, notably involving reminiscences of bare-handed killings and nuclear waste.
“I felt demonstrating competency in athletics is a good way to stand out, because the same characteristics are the same in business,” said Mr. Vayner, who legally changed his name from Aleksey Garber when he was 18. “The need to set and achieve goals, to have the dedication and competitive drive that’s required in business success.”
Despite all the mockery that the video has inspired, he still speaks proudly of his athleticism. Nearly all the feats in the video are his, he said, and they are real. (The only doubt in his mind lies in the skiing segment, which he says is probably him.) When asked about a posting Mr. Vayner had placed on the classifieds site Craigslist soliciting skiing videos — a posting that was reproduced on a blog that questioned whether the skier was him — Mr. Vayner said he was simply looking for the cameramen who shot his ski-jump efforts.
Trust us, you just had to be there…..
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=8562
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