Google all the way … in a scary way!

1 Apr, 2008 — Funny, Google, Life, Sightings

Google recruiters use Google to search for recruits for Google. And how do I know? I found out because of another Google product. The irony is that I’ve been at Google, and I will be at Google, so I’m not exactly who they’re looking for. So, all this, and the search was a failure, then?

Here’s what happened: I’m in the habit of checking my web server logs every once in a while to see which pages are popular, where my users are coming from, what keywords they type into search engines to find me, and sometimes just to stalk my stalkers. ;) For this, I use two great tools, StatCounter and Google Analytics. (StatCounter is the better of the two, by the way, but they have a last-500-visitor limit, so I need to check my stats at least daily.)

Today, the following entries appeared in my logs:
(inurl:resume or intitle:resume or inurl:cv or intitle:cv) (c or c++ or java) “computer science” “software engineer” (415 or 650 or 925 or 510 or 408 or 369 or 669 or 707 or 831 or 916 or 530) -jobs -job

The IP addresses show that the request came from Google’s Mountain View headquarters. The query shows exactly who they’re looking for. Interestingly, they seem to be hiring locally (the numbers in parentheses are all telephone area prefixes in the San Francisco Bay Area.)

There’s so much Google involved in this story, it’s scary.

  1. Ahha! There’s a potential book right there – well, at least a tutorial: on how to create a resume page on your website so that google’s HR notices you when it uses google to hire you for google.

    Sameer Ahuja — April 7, 2008 @ 12:46 pm

  2. I’ve repeatedly found complex headhunting Google queries like these in my Google Analytics logs. All of my site’s search referrals from Mountain View – and specifically from Google – are actually queries on my name, though. For those of us who don’t also have StatCounter, you can use a number of GA tools to get a reasonably good idea of who is submitting a wild query like that – simply click on the query and then use the drop-down to segment on City (or Network Location, but that might not tell you much). Alternately, you can click on a City in the Map Overlay and then segment on Keyword (or Network Location). If you have a relatively low-volume site, it can be pretty conclusive.

    Andrea — July 11, 2008 @ 4:30 pm

  3. Hi Andrea, thanks for the GA tip for other readers! I get queries for my name quite often, but those are hardly surprising or blogworthy. Here are a few more interesting ones:

    • Trying to be sneaky about Google projects!
      “inurl:resume google “mountain view” (confidential or announced) project”

    • Having participated in a workshop in Seattle got me on the radar of this recruiter.
      “(intitle:resume or inurl:resume or intitle:cv or inurl:cv) “.net” “c#” (seattle or redmond or bellevue or tacoma or everett) -free -submit -apply”

    • Based on this and other queries, if I had to give one piece of advice to a job seeker, it would be this: get a phone number within the area code of the area that you’d like a job in.
      “(intitle:resume or inurl:resume) -job -jobs -send -submit -you (“software engineer” or programmer or developer) (408 or 510 or 650 or 415) java”

    • IEEE Conferences seem important to this recruiter.
      “(inurl:resume or intitle:resume or inurl:cv or intitle:cv or inurl:vitae or intitle:vitae) (“software engineer” or “software developer” or “software programmer”) (c or c++ or java) (“ieee international conference”) javascript css -jobs”

    • No Ph.D.s, only Masters. I’m going to be overqualified.
      “(inurl:resume or intitle:resume or inurl:cv or intitle:cv) -devbistro (java) “computer science” -phd +masters”

    • Yayyy, at least one person is looking for HCI expertise for mobile devices!
      “(inurl:resume or intitle:resume) “(mobile or software) (developer or development or engineer or applications or design)” (php or java or j2ee) c (“interaction design” or “industrial design” or “human factors” or “human computer interaction” or hci) (motorola or samsung or blackberry or mobile or “hand held”)”

    • Wow, they’re looking specifically for BayCHI members! Professional societies help in more than one way.
      “baychi java c++ (“computer science” | cs) (inurl:~(resume|cv|vitae) | intitle:~(resume|cv|vitae)) -~jobs”

    • Someone specifically looking for contributions to the open source community, presumably.
      “inurl:~resume framework test gpa “open source”

    • Targeting conferences seems to be a recurring pattern.
      “chi 2008 resume”

    • Looking specifically for women?
      “”she is” software, developer, engineer (inurl:resume|intitle:resume)”

    • Zip code ranges … interesting!
      “((inurl:cv or inurl:resume)) (san-francisco or sunnyvale or mountain-view or ((94000..96000) ca))(qa or quality-assurance)( selenium or watir or xunit or php-unit, or junit or browser-based-testing or catching-regressions))-job -jobs -submit -apply -post -opening -position –opportunities”

    Manas — July 12, 2008 @ 5:41 pm

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