Feel Good Friday: Human of New York Is a Viral Jaguar Hire

By Adam Pockross - March 11, 2016

jaguar new york

Jaguar got some excellent P.R. recently, thanks to a new hire at Jaguar Land Rover Manhattan, and her story on Humans of New York.

If you’ve been off driving your Jag and avoiding much of the daily chatter on the interwebs (except for Jaguar Forums, of course), you may not have heard of Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York. But the blog, which presents street portraits of The City’s denizens, has over 20-million followers on various social networks. So it’s kind of a big deal.

One of Stanton’s recent portraits was done on Adebanke Otunba-Payne, who was recently hired as one of the dealership’s sales-and-service cashiers. Here’s Otunba-Payne’s story, in her own words:

humans of new york jaguar

“I graduated last May with an accounting degree and moved to the city. But four months had passed and I didn’t have a job yet. I’d probably sent out my resume to thirty different places. And I couldn’t afford to keep waiting for people to call me back. So I went to the strip with all the car dealerships, and started going door-to-door to see if they had any openings in accounting. I’ve always loved cars. I used to always read Consumer Reports with my dad. So I thought it would be a good fit. The lady at BMW was a bit standoffish. Then I went to Audi. They were great. Super welcoming. But they didn’t have any positions at the moment. Then I got to Jaguar/Land Rover– which was my first choice, so I was working up to it— and they sat me down right there for an interview. I was there all afternoon, then they said: ‘We like what we see. Can you start tomorrow?’ I ran outside and called my parents. My dad was so proud of me. I was so proud of myself.”

The post has since gone viral, with over 825,000 likes and 22,000 shares on Facebook alone.

Though the story doesn’t mention the dealership by name, but Vice President and General Manager, Isaac Ashwal, told Edmunds: “A lot of people realized it was our dealership because I’ve gotten a lot of notes saying, ‘What a great thing’ or ‘Thanks for hiring her.'”

It’s nice to see that knocking on doors can still get you places in this world. Hopefully Otunba-Payne can start saving up and get herself a heckuva a deal on a new Jaguar soon.