Monday, December 11, 2006

Bugger the Frogs!

A few days before Joanne left for New Zealand a set of boxes arrived from Ireland. Contained within their murky depths; my interview suit. I took it as a sign that I should be looking for employment.

I decided that the best course would be to extend my exposure to financial services. I’ve only got two years working alongside a trading floor and I wanted to consolidate that experience. So I located the main investment banks with operations in Sydney and applied directly via their websites.

I applied directly because I felt it would give me an upper hand. If faced with the mythical “identical candidates” it’s cheaper to hire the direct applicant. Also, I abhor middlemen. (Putting to one side the thorny fact that all traders and banks are, in essence, go-betweens). The applications went out on Thursday the response was silence. By the following Wednesday I decided it was time to invoke some middlemen. The phone did not stop ringing for two days.

A week (and seven interviews) later I had two job offers. Both of them were with top-tier investment banks. I selected tho position with the best exposure to the business and this Thursday (3 days after accepting) I start in one of Australia’s premier financial institutions. I’m deliriously happy with this.

Today, after two and a half weeks of hearing no replies to my direct applications, during which I’ve been interviewed and regaled with offers and interest, I finally got one response: Thank you for you interest in BNP Parisbas, unfortunately your application has been unsuccessful… I guess I have to hand it to the middlemen.

2 comments:

Rational Root said...

Hopefully if you ever go to get another job with the frogs, they won't be too upset about you buggering them 8-)

Darren said...

Oh they know it's just a bit of fun.

... Right?