Getting hired…. skills, potential or just plain luck?
Flashback: Pre dot-com boom.
Not much compares with being part of a startup with the mission to build software or services that WILL change the world.
Working with like-minded people for 12 hours every day, for months on end.
Working hard, playing hard, pressing disruptive buttons everywhere.
But businesses are less interested in the promises of tomorrow’s esoteric technology. They want solutions for today.
So after more than a year at that startup, I, alongside the other 37 staff, got fired and the firm disappeared from the Internet.
Things were slowly falling apart.
There were challenges. Somehow I managed to get two solid job offers simultaneously at the end of two months. On the day that I was about to drive and personally deliver my signed offer letter, one of my nerdy ex-colleagues called me insisting that I listen to him before accepting anything.
Why, I asked.
He said “Because I need help. I just got this job as an IT-recruiter and I am useless at it. You know I am more tech than sales. I am in trouble. I have just one last chance to get a candidate in front of my assigned client and I need really you to be that candidate…. do you have a finished resume and we do at least one client interview tomorrow morning?….. please. You are my last chance”.
So I spent 8 hours researching the firm, the interviewers and then crafting my resume, ready for the 9 am grilling.
To this date, the set of interviews was by far, my best ever.
I never mentioned the two open offers to the firm, but I do know that I was not the only candidate and I did not have more than 60% of the skills needed.
But what I did have was an aura of authenticity, and a consistent honest story that persuaded the firm that I had the potential to quickly continually learn whatever was required to lead, adapt and deliver. (I was told that information some two years later)
Two days later, I was offered the position.
This position, which came literally out of nowhere, proved to be the most pivotal in my entire career.
Skills, potential or plain luck?
