How Bari Keenam made job rejections a competitive sport to secure global tech roles

Bari Keenam has been a photographer, videographer, magazine publisher, cybersecurity intern, network engineer, graphic designer, and motion designer. At 25, he’s now a product designer at Lyft in Canada. He wishes he’d specialised earlier. But he also knows that if he had, he wouldn’t be here at all. This is the paradox of the serial learner, and how a group of audacious University of Lagos (UNILAG)  friends turned job rejections into a competitive sport.

Bari Keenam keeps his entire life in two boxes.

“I live very light,” he tells me from Canada, where he’s been since joining Lyft earlier this year. “I know I move a lot. I just have one box of clothes and shoes. Everything fits. If I need to move tomorrow for a new job, I know what to carry.”

It’s a fitting metaphor for someone who’s spent his early 20s refusing to stay in one place, geographically or professionally. At 25, Keenam has worked across three continents, four industries, and more job titles than most people try in a lifetime. His LinkedIn could give someone whiplash. 

But there’s a method to the movement.

The magazine that started everything

Keenam graduated secondary school at 15 in 2015. Too young for university, he spent three years in limbo, taking an internship at a marketing firm and teaching himself everything he could find on Coursera, Domestika, and Udemy.

“I called it serial learning,” he says. “I was just taking anything I could learn, digital marketing, front-end design, WordPress development, graphic design. Whatever I could find.”

During that time, he and a friend started an online magazine called Gumbars. “Very weird name,” Keenam admits, laughing. But it was serious work. They had a team of around  20 people; writers, photographers, designers, all between  16 and 17 years old.

“We were interviewing cool people. We met Odunsi, we met Korty, we met Slawn. A lot of them are way bigger now than they were then. ”

When the magazine stopped, Keenam took the skills he’d learned and started freelancing, first WordPress development, then design, charging whatever he thought he could get away with.

“I would say a price today and then five times the price tomorrow, and they kept saying yes,”  he remembers. “I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have to worry about getting fired by just calling random quotes.”

The UNILAG audacity

Everything changed when Keenam got into UNILAG to study Systems Engineering.

“UNILAG could be referred to as Nigeria’s Silicon Valley,” he says without hesitation. “And it’s because of audacity. Students at UNILAG were very audacious in what they wanted to try.”

He describes friends casually applying to Google and Facebook, companies he thought were ‘out of reach.’

“Then you see them get it and you’re like, ‘Oh, I can get that thing too.’ That led me to a lot of other audacious attempts in my career.”

This thinking became a guiding career-building tool. . Keenam and his friends began  what he calls ‘glorifying rejections.’

“We didn’t take no as ‘oh my gosh, sad.’ We took ‘no’ as – ‘How many nos can you get before you get a yes?’” he explains. The strategy was simple but brutal; apply to 10 jobs a day. Every single day.

As students, Keenam and his friends “applied to about 200 jobs a month,” about ten per day with the goal to “keep applying until you get a yes.”

Most applications led nowhere. But that was the point, learning how international companies interview, what they want, how to present yourself.

“I was really young. It was good to know that earlier on.”

The Toptal breakthrough

Those scores of applications eventually paid off. Keenam got into Toptal, a network of top freelance talent that only accepts about 3% of applicants.

“When I got in, I was in a very small group of Nigerians that got in,” he says. “I think that was like one of my big break moments. Everyone started noticing, ‘Oh, this guy got into Toptal.’”

That visibility led him to a role at Grey Finance (now Grey), a Nigerian fintech where Keenam worked on their rebrand. “For a brand designer, that is like the biggest thing, being involved in a rebrand.”

But while working at Grey, something unexpected happened: Snapchat got back to him.

The year-long pause

Keenam had applied to Snapchat a year earlier through LinkedIn networking. “I was very heavy on LinkedIn networking. I messaged a lot of people in companies I wanted to work at. This one person at Snapchat replied.”

He’d made it through the interview process and got a yes. Then Snapchat paused all hiring.

“They were like, ‘We can’t hire anyone unfortunately. But we’ll get back to you when we can hire again.’”

A year later, while at Grey, they did.

“The second invite was to apply from scratch. They’re like, ‘’We’re going to take you through the first interview all over again.’ But the first application was for the US. The second one was for their London office.”

Keenam moved to London to join Snapchat’s product design team. He was 23.

The problem-first designer

At Snapchat, Keenam learned something crucial about why companies kept hiring him despite his wandering path.

“I always ask in every interview: Why am I being hired here?” he says. “And they make it very clear; it’s your perspective. Your perspective is why we’re hiring you.”

That perspective? “Problem-first approach. That has been my defining trait. How do I just solve this problem?”

He describes his work as existing at two extremes, “Does it look great? But also, does this plug into a KPI that we can measure?”

It’s a philosophy born from his brand design days. “I believe that whatever I design—a logo or whatever—should have real-world measurable metrics. Snapchat liked that approach for product design.”

After nearly two years, Bari was caught in Snapchat’s layoffs. He worked remotely for a Berlin gaming company (Alt Media) before landing at Lyft through an ex-Snapchat colleague’s referral.

“That was my best interview I’ve ever had,” he says. “I could sense this beautiful work culture from the interview. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to try these guys.’”

He moved to Canada in mid-2025.

The paradox

When I ask if there’s anything he wishes he’d done differently, Keenam doesn’t hesitate.

“I wish I had locked in on one thing earlier. I think I floated around a lot in different areas.”

He lists the job titles he’s held that paid money; photography, video, print designer, graphic designer, label designer, motion designer, cybersecurity, network engineer, magazine owner.

“I think if I’d focused on one thing before going to UNILAG, I think I’d be much further up in my career now.”

Then he catches himself.

“But I would not have known if this was the right thing if I didn’t do everything else. So it’s a weird paradox. If I did lock in on that one thing, I would not have found design. I would not have been able to interview the people I did when I was younger. I could not have met the people I met. I would not have made the friends I have right now.”

He pauses. “I think everything worked out the way it was supposed to work out.”

The circle that keeps him moving

Keenam still talks to those UNILAG friends; the ones who normalised applying to Google, who turned rejections into celebrations.

“All around the world I have friends like that,” he says. “I’m just happy that my circle reflects my energy. Everyone around me is on their zoom. If they slacked, I’d be slacked. But everyone’s on their zoom, so I can’t be the one that’s not on their zoom.”

It’s that energy that keeps him in motion; still learning French, DJing, boxing. Still keeping his life in two boxes. Still applying that same 10-jobs-a-day mentality whenever he needs to move.

His end goal? “To come back to Africa with enough experience and resources to provide value; something that works exclusive of any political climate.”

But he’s not ready yet.

“I don’t think I’m at the time where I want to be brought back. There are so many people I look up to in Nigeria, designers and otherwise, that I’m still trying to reach. I’m not ready yet.”

When the time comes to plant roots, though, Keenam already knows what he’ll need: just two boxes and a tough skin.