Resume not getting noticed? Try a T-shirt

Laid off as a corporate recruiter and getting nowhere with his own job search, Andrej Bula decided to try a more in-your-face approach to networking.

In the fall of 2008, he moved in with his parents and started a company that sells T-shirts emblazoned with the words “HIRE ME,” followed by the job the person is seeking.

The Hire Me Tee shirts cost about $22 and sweatshirts go for about $32. Bula said even the unemployed appear willing to scrape up enough cash for the splurge.

“The customer is not price-sensitive,” he said.

Living with mom and dad freed him of distractions, not to mention the need to pay rent, allowing him to focus on getting the company off the ground.

Still, earlier this year he moved out of his parent’s house.

“The lifestyle was a bit different, for lack of a better term,” he said.

But although he said the business is turning a profit, he’s still not paying his own rent. Instead, he’s living with his brother’s family in Parkesburg, Pa.

Bula, 36, is far from the only person to have moved back to the family home during the course of this long economic downturn. And he’s not the only one who has drawn entrepreneurial inspiration from mom and dad’s house.

Of course, the most famous example is "$#*! My Dad Says," the Twitter feed-turned-book-turned-sitcom that Justin Halpern conceived after moving in with his parents to save money while trying to make it in Hollywood.

Bula also isn’t the only one advocating a non-traditional approach to promoting your skills in these tough times.

In Britain, one man tried wearing a “hire me” sandwich board, and in Seattle an architect has been hawking his talents at an advice booth, just like Lucy in the old Peanuts comic strips.