Google recruits people through game that shows up on page search results

Google appears to be recruiting people who come in through a game. That game, Foobar, can only be played if the user sees it when the search results page expands and shows a special message.

If you search for technical terms, you may see a box that pops up when the search results fold away with the message ‘you’re speaking our language. Up for a challenge?’, or ‘You speak our language. Ready for a challenge?’. That writes a new Google employee in a blog post on The Hustle about the recruitment method.

That notification then leads to Google.com/foobar, where users are presented with a Unix-like interface after logging in. After he had passed all the levels, a recruiter contacted him and asked for a resume and the application process was started.

It is unknown how many people will see the invitation to the Foobar page and how Google selects it.

Update, 9:39: Google has been using this method for some time, according to a thread from Hacker News almost 300 days ago.