Marketer shares how she adds hidden signatures to her work to avoid others stealing credit

TikTok user and marketing professional Cristina Sevcenco went viral on the platform with a video in which she shared a trick to prevent bosses from stealing their employees' work and presenting it as their own. In the clip, Sevcenco reveals that she has gotten into the habit of adding a hidden signature to work presentations after a former manager showed her work to their own bosses without giving Sevcenco any credit.

This problem is far from unheard of, but Sevcenco knew how to fix it so that everyone would know that it was her effort they were benefiting from. Moreover, she shared her trick with the rest of the world in a tutorial.

According to GOD, adding a hidden signature makes it so that every time someone downloads your presentation, a watermark will appear on it declaring it to be your work and no one else's. Watermarks cannot be removed except by the person with access to the original file. In a follow-up video, Sevcenco went through the process of adding the hidden signature on her laptop, showing how the watermark won’t be evident until it’s actually presented or someone tries to edit a slide. If anyone else wants it removed, they will have to contact the person who actually created the presentation, ensuring that full credit is received where due.

Sevcenco admitted that she had to learn this the hard way after she caught her manager at a previous job presenting her work to their bosses. She saw that the manager had put their own name on “every slide,” giving Sevcenco zero credit for two weeks of research and putting together the slideshow. After this experience, she looked up how to use watermarks to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again.

Sevcenco shared her tutorial on TikTok, and it garnered over 3.7 million views. Commenters were grateful for the tutorial, and some even shared their own stories of managers stealing their work in the same way. However, some commenters pointed out that this kind of thing shouldn’t be necessary for any workplace, but sadly, in many of them, it is.

Sevcenco also advised that this process can be done on nearly any program in the standard Microsoft Office package, not just PowerPoint. She expressed her surprise that other people in the industry don’t know how to use this basic protection method. “I just don’t understand how this is not common knowledge,” she said. “You should research on how to watermark your work because in a corporation, especially the ones that I have worked in, it’s very toxic and it’s very common for people to actually steal your work.”

The video shared by Sevcenco highlights an all-too-common problem in the workplace: bosses stealing their employees’ work and presenting it as their own. Sevcenco’s solution of adding a hidden signature with a watermark is a simple yet effective way to protect one’s work and ensure that credit is given where it is due. It is unfortunate that this kind of protection is necessary in many workplaces, but it is a reality that many employees face. By sharing her tutorial, Sevcenco is empowering others to protect their work and prevent their bosses from taking credit for it.