Ryan Lowry is a 20-year-old student from Leesburg, Virginia that rocked LinkedIn with his heartfelt cover letter. Ryan is living with autism and floored potential employers with his hand-written plea shared on LinkedIn last month.
“I realize that someone like you will have to take a chance on me. I don’t learn like typical people do,” the high school student began in his heartfelt message, laying bare his unique and often misunderstood traits. “I would need a mentor to teach me, but I learn quickly, once you explain it, I get it.”
“I promise that if you hire me and teach me, you’ll be glad that you did,” he assured hiring managers in the letter that has since been liked and shared by more than 175,000 users on the professional networking platform.
Lowry added that he is also “really good with technology,” “gifted at math” and has “a unique sense of humor.”
As a result of the letter, Lowry has received more than 2,000 invitations to connect on the career network — so much so that LinkedIn’s moderators were forced to temporarily disable his account due to “sudden and overwhelming engagement, ”according to Today Health, which confirmed the move with LinkedIn.
His profile has since been restored, and Lowry’s leap of faith proved to be a boon as the highly eligible employee is now in talks with several promising companies, including Dell, Amazon and Microsoft, according to his parents.
“Ryan is capable of so much,” his father, Rob Lowry, told “Today.” “The goal here for Ryan is independence.”
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” he added. “My hope was that he’d make a few connections. I thought, all we need is one person.”
“I lay in bed at night and I cry reading the messages,” said his mother, Tracy Lowry. “This raw, vulnerable letter has opened up so many opportunities.”