Down The Exxon Lane- 6

Things you must never do during a job interview

I traveled from Peshawar to Karachi for my first job interview with a large multinational company that manufactures and markets fertilizer. I applied for a marketing position.

Having recently returned from the US with a Master’s degree in Soil Chemistry, I was hopeful about my interview, yet a bit nervous.

The company’s head office was located diagonally across from the Metropole Hotel, on Victoria Road, Karachi, where I reported at the appointed time.

They processed me through the Human Resources department (they called it Employee Relations then, or ER for short), where, among other things, they gave me a long, multiple-choice test — some kind of aptitude test, I was told. They didn’t tell me the result, but I felt I had done okay.

While with the ER, I picked up a thin rubber band from a table somewhere, absent-mindedly wound it around my fingers, and kept twiddling with it. The interview jitters had set in, I guess.

Having finished with the ER, I was ushered into the office of the Marketing boss, Tony Ward. A large man in his late 50s with grey hair and a short mustache, Tony Ward was a British from Yorkshire with the proverbial stiff upper lip and a slight stammer that made him sound stern. He sat behind a large desk looking at some papers, probably my CV and ER’s comments, which must have reached him before I did.

He looked up from the papers and, with a nod, pointed to the empty chair across his desk. I sat down, twiddling the rubber band and waiting for him to start talking. Finally, he delivered his first question: “How old are you?”

“I’ll be 27 in two months”, I answered.

“When you are my age,” he said, straight-faced, “you won’t be that eager to add a year to yours.” It was his British humor, I thought.

“You studied at Colorado,” he continued, “what was Colorado known for?”
I couldn’t figure out what exactly he wanted to know about Colorado. Its history, geography, culture — or nightlife? I thought for a moment and then offered a half-hearted answer: “It was known as Colorful Colorado. That’s what the license plates of the cars mentioned.”

“I’m not interested in the color,” Mr. Ward stammered, “I am asking about agriculture.” I twiddled the rubber band more vigorously while trying to recall the crops I had seen while traveling around Colorado and started naming them. While I named the crops — wheat, corn, alfalfa, and so on — the rubber band around my finger, stretched to its limit, left my hand, and like an arrow, headed towards Mr. Ward’s chest and landed on his white shirt!

It didn’t damage Mr. Ward or his shirt, but it did surprise him. He glanced at his shirt first, then looked at me rather intensely, blinked once or twice, and proceeded with the interview as if nothing unusual had happened. He was a polite man despite his stern demeanor. Embarrassed, I felt like rolling under his desk and staying there.

Moral of the story: Don’t play with rubber bands during an interview.

Postscript: I got the job! Mr. Ward had ignored the hit.