YEC gains attention on Reddit for unique photo edit

Some Calgarians are poking fun at the City of Calgary Youth Employment Centre (YEC) online for a photo edit on its Twitter account.

A tweet posted in early March was promoting the reopening of in-person drop-in services at the YEC, where Calgarians aged 15-24 can go for free career advice and meet with an employment expert to get help with resumes, career planning, and interviews.

The picture in the tweet, however, is what is catching many people’s attention. It shows the same two faces edited onto multiple bodies of people who are all wearing different clothes for various jobs. Some Reddit users ended up having some laughs with the post.

IN ONE WEEK! The Youth Employment Centre (YEC) is reopening the doors to drop-in services. Youth ages 15-24 drop by Monday – Friday from 8 – 4 p.m.

Youth are no longer required to book an appointment online.

The YEC located in the Alberta Trade Centre: 315 10 Avenue SE pic.twitter.com/f7PHIm84k8

— Youth Employment Centre (YEC) (@yec_calgary) March 7, 2022

“No wonder no one can find a job. The same two people are hogging all the jobs in the city,” one user wrote.

“An ‘Uncanny Valley’ career Barbie & Ken,” another user writes.

But YEC claims the peculiar photoshopping was intentional.

The centre says the idea was for youth to imagine themselves in a variety of different careers, hence the repeating faces.

“With the ad, we were looking at the possibilities of a career and you know, let’s say services, food services, health care, mechanics, office, so it shows the image of one person basically, in multiple careers or jobs just to show the endless possibilities,” said Christina David, Community Relations Liaison with YEC. “Anything is possible when it comes to careers and jobs within Calgary.”

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David says these kinds of posts from YEC gain notoriety every once in a while for their eye-catching designs.

Some people seem to have understood what YEC was going for, too.

“See I like this. It makes you see that you could be anything instead of, hey look at all those other people with jobs,” Reddit user u/glowinghands writes. “I think they tried harder than otherwise!”

“We do get quite a bit of traction with that, people are going to find it interesting,” David said. “You know, it catches their attention at first, like, ‘what is this?’ And so we do find it, it has its moments of like drawing quite a bit of attention to it.”

The YEC is having another hiring fair April 7.