CorpComms Magazine

UK intelligence agency GCHQ has launched a code-cracking competition on social media to recruit would-be spies.

The Cheltenham-based organisation has shunned the traditional pools at Oxford and Cambridge and has instead launched a viral campaign on Twitter and Facebook that directs would-be James Bonds to an unbranded standalone website entitled 'Can you crack it?'

Players face a bizarre grid of 160 pairs of letters and numbers and a countdown clock. The competition, which launched on 3 November, ends at midnight on 12 December.

Players who crack the code are given a keyword to enter into a form field, which directs them to the agency's recruitment website.

A spokesman for GCHQ told the BBC that the campaign is designed to reach people who may not have thought of spying as a career. 'The target audience for this particular campaign is one that may not typically be attracted to traditional advertising methods, and may be unaware that GCHQ is recruiting for these kinds of roles,' he said.

'Their skills may be ideally suited to our work and yet they may not understand how they could apply them to a working environment, particularly when they have the opportunity to contribute so much.'

GCHQ is looking to recruit about 35 spies over the next few months, with expert code breaking skills and also knowledge of rare languages.

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