PBwiki are a hosted business wiki startup in California. They want new staff, and my guess is their recruitment brief is to get people who are thoroughly plugged into Web2.0, and people who know their technical stuff.
So they don’t take out an ad. They make a placard that says “Do Not Post Pictures Of This Sign On The Internet 986f 64b9 3005 e03e fc42 a41e bd57 3179”, and stick it in some random places in their home town of San Mateo.
In no time at all, the ‘prohibited’ photo has thousands of Diggs and Reddits, and loads of mentions all over, with intense debate about what’s going on here (and the usuals shouting ‘photoshop’). Until that is some ubergeeks recognise the code as an MD5 encryption of a URL, leading them to PBwiki’s job ad.
Genius stuff, good for PBwiki’s job applications I’d guess, and good for their image as a creative place for experts to work – wins all round.
This was a brilliant campaign that was conceived and executed by our head of engineering on his own time. I tip my cap to him.
cute
though given one of my members rant on the wag on the lack of chopps of the average web2.0 techies are they sure web 2.0 types will be able to decode that 🙂
Heh heh, nah – but we can read enough of Digg to nick the links 😉 – Whether of course that will be enough to get us through an interview is a different matter.
btw Thanks Chris – Good luck finding the people you’re after!