A recruiter related this story once at a former employer. I have no idea if it's true, but it remains incredible to tell. In a past life, he'd been hired to fi

A recruiter related this story once at a former employer. I have no idea if it's true, but it remains incredible to tell. In a past life, he'd been hired to find a cybersecurity expert in a very niche field, where there are really only a handful of people with the proven chops. Naturally, all of them are happily employed and unlikely to switch, so he decided to get clever. He zeroed in on one target. First, he thought, let's find out contact information. A quick Google search turns up nothing (no email, no phone number, no social media handles), but a more advanced one with boolean filters brings up a link to a personal website that had long since been taken offline. So my recruiter used the Wayback Machine to inspect the link, and finds, to his joy, it's been cached. In the About Me section, there's a small snippet about how he enjoyed playing chess and a social media handle. Now the recruiter gets even craftier. He uses the Foursquare API to track his check-ins from the social media handle. Over the course of a few weeks, a pattern emerges - every Friday, maybe a Thursday, the expert would check in to a local bar. So this recruiter simply shows up at that bar on a Friday, and waits for the guy. He lets him sit there for a bit, nursing his drink, and then sidles up to him and starts a conversation about chess. They bond over it. The guy invites the recruiter to his local chess club, who meet every Sunday. Over the next few days, the recruiter gains his trust, learns what this guy wants. Then finally he pitches the company he represents, addressing everything the guy had brought up to him in the conversation. He walks away that evening with a willing candidate who would go on to get hired. I have no idea how true this story is. This recruiter was an unusual fellow, and he only stayed for a few months at my former employer.