14 DAY TRIAL // Many would do anything for a good job, from obsessively improving their CVs with fake abilities and degrees up to being on the employer's doorstep every morning two hours before the intended interview time.
One German techie decided he was going to do neither or anything of the sort. He decided to attract Google's attention in a far more interesting way: by cyber squatting. For those who don't know what that means, cyber squatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
That's just what 27-year-old Sebastian Klein decided to do, so he registered adwordsgoogle.de, docsgoogle.de, gdrivegoogle.com and translategoogle.de and then expressed his interest in working for Google's security department: "Hi Google, I would not like to keep these domains, earn also no money with it. I return it to you immediately free of charge. All I seek for is a job at Google", he said in his online plea.
Surprisingly enough, he even set conditions for his accepting the supposed job the Mountain View Based company would offer him: "Important for me is that I every weekend somehow come to Cologne, in order to visit my daughter. Of course, there can be exceptions, but I would not be longer than a maximum of three weeks away from Cologne. Of course money also plays a certain role. I would like to perform a lot and also be paid well. However, quite clearly I am ready to put back with the money if for it the work is great fun."
That's rather presumptuous of him but it's not his first attempt to get a job using unorthodox means. He was reported as putting his girlfriend up for auction on eBay in 2005 just to attract employers. John E. Dunn of Techworld observes that "Google has not so far commented on the unorthodox nature of Klein's approach. The domains now appear to be redirecting to various Google pages, suggesting Klein might have had enough of the attention he has generated for himself or simply be trying to appease the search giant."