Daring desperation

It’s been a while since I haven’t blogged, apologies to fellow readers, after a nervous breakdown in December I took off to the south of France and Megeve, checked out expensive ski slopes and posh women wearing fur. It did good to MMM, I realized that in 2012, the Miserable Middle Manager’s community is not the most persecuted. Foxes are and I should be glad that the rich don’t wear MMMs skin.

So, after a couple of weeks of rest and meditation, MMM came back to hell. Let’s leave the ‘MMM is back in the office’ topic for another time, yesterday Monday I had my first interview of the year, happy new year MMM.

Ladies and gentlemen, watch out, I am serving this story hot, MMM first fuckery of the year coming now!

Ho well.

The job was top, working for a top guy, the CEO of RatzParalyze – position of business middle manager to deliver the global strategy. Sounded promising.

Obviously I got the interview through an agent, named John-Gerard. I saw his picture on Linkedin and he looks like an hybrid of Dexter and Sarah Jessica Parker, not his fault. Anyway, he calls me in the morning to prep me, behavioural interview with the CEO, then the CFO - I ask him if there is any case study (i.e.: how many pink bras will be sold in the UK in 2045...). Guy seems on acids: sure I’ll check and call you back, two minutes later he is back on the phone: don’t worry, all cool, nothing to worry about and certainly no case study.

Ouf.

So I spend my whole morning checking the company’s website, reading about how good they are at eradicating pestilence, how they kill pest humanly etc... Then I dig out all the books in my library that have keywords related to ‘strategy’ or ‘success’ in their title : ‘How to pull men in bars: a woman’s successful strategy’, ‘Successful cooking’, ‘Leveraging your inside edge successfully’, ‘Successfully overcoming period pain’ etc...I have so many academic books on success, it is unbelievable.

So comes 3PM I am ready to rock, sitting at the reception of RatzParalyze with a glass of water. (What do you want to drink asked the receptionist : don't you have a Ricard by any chance?). Thanks to Bare Mineral make up, it doesn’t show on my face that I feel like vomiting of stress on the desk of the receptionist : she looks like a bitch and the carpet is olive green, yukk.

3:15, CEO guy arrives, his name is Dick, I mean Richard. OK looking, middle aged, very, very quiet....no word until we sit down in front of each other, he eventually asks where I live, like he couldn’t come up with a better ice breaker...

Thing is, he doesn’t give a shit where I live, he has a surprise for me : ‘OK, I believe the recruitment agent has told you about our standard procedure, first a case study then a behavioural chat with my colleague’. He may as well have said : ‘OK, the agent has fucked you again, he is the brother of Philippe Focker and he wants you to fail right now, I have worked for Accenture for 20 years and I am used to set candidates up for failure, so they never forget my rat face’.

Obviously I have the email of the agent which shows no mention of a case study, but at this stage it is too late, so I jump into the case study.

I am bad at case studies. I really can’t think on my feet, my brain needs time to process shit and my mind usually goes blank when I am asked to work out numbers.

But to be honest, I am so tired of interviews that something amazing happened as soon as he told me about the case study (you work for Bill Gates, he wants to create Microsoft Cola and he has a meeting with Tesco on Thursday in order to negotiate an exclusive deal with Tesco. Advise him on the product strategy), indeed, as soon as I heard ‘case study’, all the stress went away!

It seemed that my brain had suddenly given up stressing, I had failed again! So I did all the calculations I could (all wrong obviously) and after we finished (badly), I started glaring at Dick, checking each of the wrinkles on his face. He didn’t have many questions, and he asked me if I had any. So what happened then is what I call Daring Desperation : in a desperate last attempt to get the job you dare becoming yourself again.

 So I questioned the stupid current strategy of RatzParalize, why paralyze pestilence when you can kill it instantly? I told him that if he was hiring only on the results of a case study he would be ruling out potentially great candidates like me. As a result, he became a bit defensive and he almost ran out of the room, leaving me behind, waiting for my next bully. But I know that he will remember me.

Then I considered leaving the room, I thought that even doing the Asda Sales would probably be a better use of my time. But then a very nice gentleman arrived, and asked me how I did with his colleague, said that if I did badly he wouldn’t be surprised, that Dick was not that good at explaining case studies and that they were desperate to find someone for the position which had been left vacant for a long time.

SO.

Will I get the job or have I, again, wasted my time?

I have come to realise that having an MBA had another inconvenience : recruiters think that you can work out numerical shit very quickly, so they fetch stupid case studies in books, they learn the answers by heart and judge you if you don’t answer right straight away.

Truth is most MBA graduates don’t even know how much is 7x8.

Happy 2012 everyone!