One of my first big career successes was in 2000, when I became Polo Ralph Lauren's in-house photographer. It was my second staff photography job, the first at Christie's auction house. Polo offered double my Christie's salary, a no-brainer. But looking back, the most interesting part was how I found this dream job: through a classified listing in the New York Times.

I'm a digital hoarder—I've saved every email since 1997 and scanned all my childhood papers. So I searched my archives and found the cover letter I sent when applying. That gave me an approximate date to search the Times Machine. On January 16, 2000, I found the listing: "PHOTOGRAPHER Leading Fashion Company seeks staff photographer... Please fax resume to CWP." CWP were the initials of my future boss.

Now I question my memory. Did I really look up the phone number to discover it was Polo? Google was around but would it have indexed a fax number? And I could swear my boss left a message saying she'd gone through a "butt load of resumes"—but that doesn't sound like her.

I shared this story with someone who said "Post that on LinkedIn!" But I'm not that kind of person. So I'm sharing it here. Did you ever find a job, a date, or a couch in newspaper classifieds? Tell me about it.