From Cambridge to Queensland: One Harvardian’s Quest for “The Best Job”

How far would seniors go in this economic recession to ensure a job after graduation? Would any of them, say, risk a jump into the freezing Charles River?

For one Kirkland House senior, the answer is an emphatic yes. Radford “Rad” Murphy ’09 sported nothing but swim trunks in his minute-long video entry for Tourism Queensland’s “The Best Job in the World” competition. Video entries are rated by the public on the job’s Web site, and the winner earns the crown title of “Island Caretaker” of Hamilton Island along the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia. The six-month job comes with keys to a posh three-bedroom beach front house and a hefty salary totaling 150,000 Australian dollars.

If the compensation isn’t enticing enough, as part of a Tourism Queensland marketing campaign, the caretaker faces the daunting task of exploring this stunning tropical paradise and the underwater world below while chronicling the adventures in a video blog series and photos to be posted online.

“I was never going to work at an office job,” says Murphy, whose last summer internship entailed swimming with sharks in the Bahamas. His right hand still bears a distinct scar from an encounter gone awry. Murphy hopes that this past experience will give him an edge amongst over 34,000 competitors, including Cabot House resident Thomas R. Benson ’09. Benson says he applied in the hopes of getting “basically a paid vacation.”

On the other side of campus, Lowell resident Zuleyka D. Bonilla ’10, another applicant, made a public plea over the Lowell open house e-mail list, asking house mates to give her the highest five-star rating for her entry video. Bonilla could not be reached for comment.

If Murphy doesn’t make the cut, he plans to recover by spending another year in the Bahamas after graduation. Seniors banging at the doors of Wall Street may look on in envy.