02 September 2005
	SIDELINES GOOGLE GOOGLES FOR NEW TALENT

As the graduate recruitment season draws near, companies who still think the way to lure talent is through brochures distributed by pretty girls on campus should perhaps take heed of Google's preferred method of soliciting interest. A billboard in Silicon Valley posed a complex mathematical problem: {the first 10-digit prime in consecutive digits of e}.com. That was it - there was no branding or clue to indicate what that was about. Except for maths boffins, that is. Finding the answer, 7427466391.com, led to a Web page with yet another anonymous equation to solve. Solving the second, more difficult problem provided the answer. It took the puzzle sleuth to a page on Google Labs, the company's research and development department, which read: "One thing we learnt while building Google is that it's easier to find what you're looking for if it comes looking for you. What we're looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are." Google regularly hosts programming challenges as a way to spot talent. The only tiny problem with this one was that in a matter of days the answers were posted on the Web and could be found by using Google's search engine.