The title is fairly self-explanatory.
The answer to the puzzle would lead to a URL of the recruitment application.
It feels both on-topic and quite 'spammy'.
Would this be well recieved? Or would it be better as a community add?
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$\begingroup$ Well, fancy seeing you here :-) $\endgroup$– Rand al'ThorCommented Oct 25, 2017 at 23:34
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I think there are two problems here.
It feels like this would be using the Puzzling community rather than contributing to it
The purpose of posting this, if I've understood right, would be to encourage Puzzling participants to go off and get recruited. The "correct" purpose of posting a puzzle here is to provide Puzzling participants with something interesting to bash their heads against.
This might be received OK if it were in fact a really good puzzle. I don't think I've ever seen a "recruitment puzzle" that was in fact a really good puzzle, though :-).
It would fail to do what seems like its main job
If there's any point in posting a "recruitment puzzle" rather than just an advertisement saying "hey, come and work for us", it is (or should be?) that the puzzle acts as a bit of a filter: you only want to employ people who are able to solve the puzzle. But if you post the thing as a puzzle here, then someone will solve it and post the answer, and then boom! no more filter.
Quite possibly this isn't a real problem -- because the filtering purpose is wholly fictional and the aim is to pretend that you're filtering for people able to solve the puzzle, so that applicants feel like applying for the job is some kind of achievement. In which case, see above about using the community rather than contributing to it.
(I'm a moderator here but this isn't intended as any sort of official response; I haven't discussed this with the other mods. My guess is that their opinions will be similar to mine, though.)
answered Oct 24, 2017 at 15:51
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$\begingroup$ Thanks for the input! I'm not responsible for the puzzle, so my only thought was 'Oooh, I know a community of puzzle lovers'. What about as a Community Ad? That still feels off the mark to me. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 16:09
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1$\begingroup$ Community ad seems nearer the mark, but I haven't really looked at exactly what those are meant to do. Am I understanding the situation right: it's your employer but not your idea or your puzzle, they're going to be using the puzzle for recruiting anyway, and you're wondering whether to post it on Puzzling? $\endgroup$– Gareth McCaughan ModCommented Oct 24, 2017 at 16:39
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1$\begingroup$ Fellow site Mod in complete agreement. See also What kind of behavior is expected of users? which notes that the philosophy behind this is to Avoid overt self-promotion and suggests advertising instead. (Note that Community Ads provide free promotion for open source projects and non-profit organizations, but if that doesn't describe what you're trying to recruit for it's indeed probably not an appropriate option either.) $\endgroup$– Rubio ModCommented Oct 24, 2017 at 20:41
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$\begingroup$ @rubio, Thanks of the comfirmation. Gareth, yes that's the situation. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 9:13