a place where you can find me...

Monday, February 21, 2005

What is the name of Rob's Dog?

Few days back I was reading Gretchen's Blog, and there was this interesting post by Rob McIntosh about how people should have gone about Scavenger Hunt(finding the name of his dog)? I am pasting here the solution provided by Rob
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There were three critical steps that I was looking for people to reach into their bag of sourcing tricks...So here's the answer and how you get there!

Step 1 = Use of multiple search engines (vs just Google)
Specific Example: If you enter the search of "rob mcintosh" blog in Google you would get results but it would miss my blog. If you enter the same search in Yahoo/Altavista as an example you would find my blog on the first page - "Australian Recruiter meets Uncle Sam"

Step 2 = Deeper Internet technique...
Looking at the source code on a page
When you arrive at my blog you will find the usual stuff except if you look at the top post of "If a blog falls in a forest would anyone hear it fall" it has an initial anonymous (me ;-) comment which is actually a hint. It reads "To understand the question one must look within to seek enlightenment!". A lot of internet recruiters know that sometimes you can find some gems in the source code of a web page. If you look within the source code on this page about 3/4 of the way down you will find
Dear Recruiter/Researcher......
Now you are on the right path to completing my challenge :-) !!!!!!!McIntosh's Of Seattle

Step 3 = The Final Step
Now you are at a personal web page that is near impossible to find by itself or indexed by any search engine unless you had the link. I have mentioned in other posts that there is no point rusing/contacting my staff as I had prepared them to be potentially contacted (which a lot of good recruiters would actually try by going the direct route and just asking people), plus I also never told them the name of my dogs anyway.
This site has a lot of potential leads to other sites or images but all would be a dead end. In one part of the site is the contact email address of a few people and in particular my father. If you look at his email address it ends with a @xxxxx.au which is the give away that he is still in Australia. He had actually been prepped ahead of time that he might get emailed unusual requests for my dog's name from strangers.
If you do what a lot of recruiters do as bread and butter (networking) then if you sent him an email he should respond with the answer :-

The Answer:
1) A Rhodesian Ridgeback called 'Kimba"
OR
2) A King Charles Cavalier Cocker Spaniel called 'Tuffy'

I hope you all enjoyed playing as I got a lot of emails and calls from both Software Developers and Recruiters that said they had a blast with the challenge and spent many an hour trying to work out the problem.
For you are interested in me creating another one (not necessarily for a job opening on my team), drop me a email (if you can find my email address ;-) and if the demand is there, then my team would be happy to devise another.

Regards, Rob McIntosh
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I found this one to be really interesting...I am sure I want more scavenger hunts :))

Sunday, February 13, 2005

My New Bible

Found my new bible :: How to be Creative?