A very unique Google Opportunity

Posted by Jim Stroud

October 9, 2008

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Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary by bring back its oldest available index. So what does that mean? It means that you can search Google the way it was meant to be searched in the year – 2001. (That’s right math majors, they no longer had their 1998 index available.) This brings about a very unique opportunity!

What if you needed to find someone for a Senior role? Well, now you can imagine what they were doing in 2001 and then (hopefully) track them down to the present day. As an example of how to do this, at least in the quickest way possible, I visited the 2001 Google index and did a search for a Software Developer skilled in C++. This is the search string I used:

intitle:resume C++ software.developer -apply -jobs -submit

And these are the results that were returned. (Curiously enough, without ads, it looks almost the same. Logo is different ‘though.) Notice the arrow? It is pointing to the 2nd search result – Rafael Pena.

I go to Rafael’s resume and I see that it has not been updated since 2002. Hmmm… I take a closer look at his resume and notice that his email address matches a company address (Software Structures).

I look that company up and click the contact link. I wonder if the guy is still there? If not, maybe someone can redirect me to where he is now? Guess what I find out? Rafael owns this company and there is a PhD behind his name. Cool. Now if only I had a job to offer him…

Can you think of other ways to use this version of Google?

Happy Hunting!

Jim Stroud

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