External Business Meeting 101:

Things to do:

1. Inform reception of arrival.
2. Conduct the meeting in professional manner.
3. Leave.

Generally, the main focus of time and energy should be step 2...

...generally.

Dave and his colleague, Nicola, arrived at company X's building for a 3pm with Y.

Note: The company is not actually called "X" (however the person they were meeting really is known only as "Y").

Step 1: They informed reception that they were here to see Y who worked for X.

Reception stared back at them blankly.

"X?"

"Yes, X. To see Y"

Another blank.

"X?"

... after several more loops of this conversation, Nicola finally spotted X's name on the floor plan of the building and pointed it out to Mr Reception.

The fact that the company existed seemed to be good enough proof for Mr Reception that the duo did indeed have a meeting with Y and they were given their cheap paper passes without any further checks to see if Y was actually expecting them or even existed.

After all, they seemed to know the building better than he did.

Step 2: The meeting went without a hitch and an hour later it was wrapped up with smiles and handshakes all round.

Step 3: On leaving the building, Nicola handed in her pass to Mr Reception, Mr Reception stared at Dave and Dave stared back at him blankly.

"You need to hand back your pass."

'Fudge.'

"I've left it in the meeting room."

"Go back and get it."

And so, Nicola and Dave returned to the meeting room to collect the AWOL pass and adhere to the correct protocol of the building.

Note: At this point, the duo were roaming the building completely unaccompanied with no one knowing they were coming back up and neither of them had a pass...

Anywho, 2nd time lucky, the pass was handed back and they were out the door.

Easy.

London

For those who were wondering, Living in London has it's pros and cons for Dave:

Pro: The underground is very very handy during weekdays. If your waiting more than 5 min your pretty unlucky.
Con: Despite this, it's consistantly packed to bursting point during regular going to and from work times.
Pro: A packed tube allows you to rub against pretty girls completely guilt free and without getting slapped!
Con: 90% of tube users seem to be male. The other 10% generally aren't pretty.

Pro: The room Dave was renting was clean, tidy and less than 30min away from his job.
Con: The 2 housemates were less than friendly. The girl said little more than hello, and sometimes not even that. The guy... well, having lived there for over a week, Dave still hadn't even seen him.
Pro: The near non-exsitance of his housemates made the shower rush far easier.
Con: The temperature on the shower tended to jump from one extreme to the other without warning.

Pro: Dave's new job was paying him to play around with numbers making pretty graphs.
Con: ... erm....
Pro: The people at Dave's job were friendly, fun and smart. The guy who was his direct line manager was full of life and pretty damn sexy. The work he did actually mattered, unlike a Thesis.
Con: ... OK, I got nothing, I like my new job.

Pro: Dave's new job gave him £27K per year.
Con: Tax, NI, student loan repayments, a room in London, travel expenses, food and a Jean in Liverpool meant he had approximately £0 per year spare from that.
Pro: In addition to 25 days holiday they also gave him 40 study days every year.
Con: They actually expected him to study on those days.

Con: The general public in London are generally souless. They will not step aside if they see someone wants to get past. They will not apologise if they barge into you. Smiles are rare.
Pro: You can sing really loud and no one will even look at you. Looking at fellow humans is forbidden.
Con: Jean and everyone Dave knew and cared about were all up North, sitting around the pool eating liver.
Pro: Jean would be heading south in a few months.

How's u?

Fairwell Echo

After 5 years of going door to door, it was finally time for Dave's last knock. Like the majority of previous knocks, it was a crazy old lady who didn't read the paper.

And so, with a card and a gift, a few hand shakes and hugs and a drink or two, Dave said his final goodbyes and set off for pastures green.

A few days later, the following letter arrived at the Echo:

"Dear Echoers and Jayne.

Just wanted to say a huge "Thank You!!" for the gift and the card. Speaking of the card, Ann the feeling is mutual, if only I weren't married, Brian, me too, Lisa any day now I swear and thanks and best wishes to you all.

Looking back I've seen so much working here, alcoholism, violence, verbal abuse, nudity... but enough about Brian... I've knocked on thousands of doors, spoken to thousands of people and got around 10 of them to sign up to the Echo. It's been good... mostly...

Jayne, should you ever try to replace me, the new kid's going to have some pretty big shoes to fill. I've been consistently the cheapest employee of the Echo, bar none. In addition, I can read maps, find the car and ALWAYS remind people when its time to go home... usually at around 6:30pm... I used to be responsible for switching on the light in the car too, but that proved too much to handle.

Kate, I know how much you like that Internet thing, so I've put my email and my Blog at the top of the page. No excuses.

I'll miss you all, but I'll be in touch.

Now hopefully this letter will reach you before the redundancies start...

Dave."

Alarming

As a general rule, a global recesion is not the best time to look for employment. Worst still, a job in a finance related area is not the best idea when its all the finance sectors fault, redudancies occur daily and "banker" has become another word for "anti-christ". But then, Dave had always liked to live dangerously... this one time he even got away with claiming 79p for a pack of Hobnobs on a University expenses form... shh... keep it quiet...

Having set his heart on an Actuarial position, the endless stream of applications began. Unfortunately, the replies were few and far between. He had thus far secured an interview with a total of 1 company down in London and that was over a month ago with no word from them since.

All Dave could do was wait... watch TV... eat ice cream... play games... and wait...

Finally the phone call came. "I have good news..." 2nd interview. Result.

And so he set off to London for round two.

The interview started off ok, they briefed him on the company layout asked him standard questions and recieved standard replies. In fact, Dave had pre-recorded all of these answers and just pressed play on his tape recorder.

Then things went a little off the norm. The fire alarm started.

"... erm... do we have to leave..?"

"...yes..."

The building was evacuated. The conversation became a little less formal...

"So, your from Liverpool, which side of the football do you support?"

"I don't really watch it much to be honest."

"Oh. You just failed the interview."

20 min later they returned to the interview room and the formalities reappeared as if by magic.

"Tell me how you would price an insurance policy against a Terrorist attack?"

'I have no idea,' thought Dave.

"...."

"...."

".... I have no idea..." said Dave.

The interview finished shortly afterwards. The guy, clearly feeling sorry for Dave having wasted his time and money getting down to London just to crash and burn offered to try and see if the company would repay the expenses. They didn't.

Still it wasn't all bad, on the train ride back to Liverpool, Dave found the following in the Virgin trains magazine:

"FREE PUZZLE. Cut out'n'keep! Month by month collect all 5,000 pieces!"

'Cool,' thought Dave, 'In 416 years I'll have the whole jigsaw puzzle!'

A week later Dave recieved another phone call:

"Good news! The next part of the jigsaw puzzle is available! Also, the company said they're going to offer you the job, they're just working out the details."

Nice.

So for anyone still trying to find a job in these troubled times, there is hope. Just remember, its not important how you answer the questions, you just need to make yourself memorable...

... by setting fire to the building.

Credit Suisse. Part 2.

Monday was a great day.

Not only was Dave confident he would be recieving good news from Credit Suisse any day now, he had also just recieved his quarterly grant payment from Uni and much to his surprise they had paid him £750 more than he was expecting. 'Wow.'

Unfortunately the error was quickly picked up, ah well. Even more unfortunately, a previous error which Dave had not even realised was an error was picked up at the same time. Instead of £750 more than he expected, Dave would now have £750 less. 'Darn'

Enter Thursday.

On the way to hand in a cheque for £1500, Dave popped briefly into his office at Uni. After a bit of map searching and head scratching he eventually found the right department and handed it over. "Handed it over" here meaning had it pryed from his steal vice grip.

Easy come, Easy go. Dave headed for the comfort of home.

On reaching home he discovered he had left his keys in his office. 'Damn.'

He quickly yo-yoed back and forth once more and collapsed in front of his computer to check his emails.

Credit Suisse.

This was it. This day would finally be turning around...

"... Unfortunately, having reviewed the performance of all of our candidates being interviewed, we will not be progressing your application further at this time..."

...

'*%£*"$*"!!!!!!!!!'

But on the bright side it would be Monday again soon.

Credit Suisse. Part 1.

After several weeks of waiting, with each day reporting ever increasing numbers of redundencies, Dave had all but given up on his applications to various investment banks. It was clearly just not the right time to try.

One by one the replies came in. "We're sorry, but due to the high number of...", "No." "Nah dah." "Good Luck." Unfortunately, no surprises.

Until, on Thursday 27th Nov 2008, a ray of hope! Credit Suisse had offered him an interview for an internship starting June '09. "Would you be interested?" Dave almost snapped their hand off.

Tuesday 2nd Dec 2008, Dave headed down to London on the 8:15am train from Liverpool. He had hardly slept at all and the butterflies in his stomach refused to let him eat. He just about managed an apple and a few biscuits on the journey down south.

The interview process would start at 1pm. Dave arrived around 20 min early and was shown to a small room to axiously wait.

It was a nice enough room. Mostly green. Just big enough to fit the round table in it's center surrounded by 5 chairs and a small desk top in the corner on which rested tea and coffee facilities. One wall was taken up almost entirely by windows and Dave stared down from the 16th floor room on the city that may soon be his home.

Dave was not good at interviews. He had not eaten. He had not slept. He was a bag of nerves. The wait was killing him.

Finally, a little after 1pm, a man entered the room. Dave stood, shook his hand and the two knights of the round table sat down together to decide the fate of Camelot. The man started by introducing himself and his work, Dave asked some small questions but basically sat there like a nodding dog. Dave was then asked to briefly describe his PhD topic, which he did.

And then the fun started.

"Why do you want to work for Credit Suisse?"
"Give me an example you have worked well in a team?"
"What is your biggest weakness?"

etc, etc, etc, were all questions that Dave was NOT asked. In fact, other than the initial introduction, the entire interview was just a bunch of fun little mathematical puzzles.

"Simplify i^i"
"If I have two children and one of them is a girl, whats the probability the other one is a girl?"
etc etc etc

'Cool,' thought Dave. (For those that didn't know, people who do PhD's in mathematical topics tend to have a different view on the meaning of "cool".)

At two 2pm the first guy left. Dave poured himself a glass of water and waited for the second. Nerves? What nerves? He owned this room. At 3pm, he poured himself another glass and waited for the 3rd.

At 6pm he finally left the room with his 5th and final interviewer. All five interviews had been almost identical to the first. They had nearly all started with a brief introduction and the requirement of Dave to explain his PhD and then poured straight into mathematical games. Some had even asked him the same maths questions, though Dave had been honest/foolish enough to admit when this had happened instead of using it to obvious advantage.

He left Credit Suisse a little after 6pm. He caught two tubes back to Eusten with severe delays, arriving there around 7:30pm. With 45 minutes to wait for his train back home and his butterflies well and truely dead, it finally occured to Dave that breakfast might be a good idea.

When you haven't really eaten for nearly 24 hours, breakfast is glourious. The finest chicken salad subway known to man. Yummy.

With 30 minutes until his train back to Liverpool, Dave then went looking for dinner.

He arrived home a little after 11pm. Now all he could do was wait. If successful, he would soon be invited to another 5 hours of interviews down in London. Successful completion of that would get him an offer for a 10 week internship come June. Successful completion of that would get him a job offer starting in January 2010, just in time for the start of the next big financial bubble.

Fingers crossed.

Work

"Hi, sorry to bother you, I'm just calling from the Echo..." said Dave for the 100th time that day as yet another random face prepared to slam a door in his face, "Do you read the Echo at all?"

The lady stared at him blankly. "Do you know what happened the last time?"

'Oh dear,' Dave thought to himself, 'Here we go again.' He mentally turned off and switched on the autopilot which would nod, try to look polite and occasionally say things like, "That should not of happened", "Terrible" and "We have new people delivering now".

What was so difficult about delivering a paper? It seemed well over 95% of Echo readers used to have it delivered, but after what happened the last time...

The lady was still talking, now her husband had joined in and they had gone to fetch an echo from 17 years ago to prove whatever point they had made. This had gone on too long, Dave had to end it and move on. As politely as he could, he pulled himself away, hurling tonights Echo at them and offers of a free week. Why do so many people seem to think such a simple minded canvesser had any say what so ever as to how the echo runs things. Oh well. Onwards.

Dave gave a loud knock on the next door, waited a moment, and began again as the door creaked open.

"Hi, sorry to bother you, I'm just calling from the Echo. Do you read the Echo at all?"

..."Do you know what happened the last time?"...