The year was 1995. I had completed my post-graduation and was looking for a job. I was already teaching in a private college on temporary contract basis. But that job neither paid me decently, nor offered any career prospects. One day my father telephoned me on the college number and informed me about an advertisement that he had seen in that day’s newspaper (No cell phones those days!). It was the advertisement of a walk-in interview for the post of Commercial Officer in a chemical manufacturing company. The interview was in a hotel close to my college. So, after finishing my class I reached the hotel around 3 pm. That was my first walk-in interview. The venue was empty, because the interview had begun at 10 in the morning, and probably all prospective candidates would have completed the process. I was asked to wait. A lady came and asked me for my CV. I didn’t have! She asked me, without a CV how do we conduct your interview. She gave me a sheet of paper and asked me to quickly write a CV. I was feeling bad that I didn’t carry one. I quickly wrote a CV and handed over to her. Within five minutes I was called in. There were two interviewers and as soon as I sat, one of them asked me, what is your date of birth? When I answered, with a smile he handed over the CV that I had written five minutes ago. In a hurry, I had written the year of birth as 1995! Going by that, I was just an infant, a couple of months old. This put me completely off. I don’t know what answers I gave to the questions that followed. Anyway, the result of the interview was obvious.
After few days, a friend
showed me the advertisement of a walk-in interview for the post of Accounts Executive
in the Kochi office of a UK based tea auctioning firm. This time I was well prepared. I reached the office of the company early in
the morning with three copies of my typewritten CV. When I was called in for the interview, I was
surprised to see the interviewer – Ganapathy Swamy, my father’s friend. I had not known that he was working for this
company. He was also surprised because he
was not expecting me there. He asked me,
what are you doing here? I said, I came
for the interview. He laughed loudly,
made me sit comfortably and started talking, ‘you know, we were your next-door neighbors
when you were born. Since my son was
already grown up, I gave his cradle to your father, and you were put to sleep
in that. In few months, we shifted to
another house. He continued, you are
already a post-graduate, and you are pursuing ICWAI. I don’t need a candidate like you. The job here involves managing our sales tax
documents, which even a graduate can do.
You have a bright future ahead and I don’t want to spoil that by
offering you this job. After having the
coffee that he had offered me, when I got up to leave, he said, go and tell your
father why I didn’t offer you the job.
While climbing down the stairs of his office, I didn’t know whether to
feel happy that someone appreciated me for my accomplishments or to feel sad
for losing another job opportunity!
