Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Wrong Guy



A colleague of mine has been known to recount the following tale of when he was interviewing candidates for a job (names changed to blah blah blah).

Heading down to the reception area he enquired of those waiting “Simon Brown?”.

A fellow stood up, nodded and accompanied my colleague back to his office, where said colleague the Chief Eng1neer proceeded to grill him about his knowledge of w@stewater netw0rks.

After about 5 minutes the interviewee paused and said “I’m a little confused with all these questions…I’m not sure they have much to do with the p1pe material I’ve come to talk to you about.”

“P1pe material?” asks my colleague, “I thought you were here for the networks job?”

“Job?” replies their poor victim “No, I’m a salesman with X company, here to talk about plastic p1pes…”.

After much embarrassed laughter, they return to reception, where the ‘correct’ Simon Brown is identified (“well I did wonder...” he said) and his salesman namesake is united with whoever it was that wanted to know about his product.

An amusing story, but I think this guy has it licked.

Imagine, you turn up for a job interview as an IT assistant at the BBC, the next thing you know you’re being shoved in front of a camera and being asked to give you expert opinion on the legal battle between Apple Computers and Apple Corps. A situation not helped by the fact that you are French Congolese and have only self-taught English at your disposal.

Guy Goma, Guy Kewney, it's an easy mistake to make...

OK his answers wouldn’t have won a Faking It style test, but the fact he kept calm and did his best, is a fine testament to the guy. I hope he got the IT job.

And who knows, Alan Sugar may just have found inspiration for one of the challenges for the next season of The Apprentice.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sad to report that he didn't get the job. But he is probably the most famous job applicant in the country. Well, this week at least.