Total Wipeout - part 3 of my training contract adventure
Of course, all good times have to come to an end, and for me this came in the form of an assessment centre which I did at a City firm that I will call Thomas Harwood towards the end of my summer. I had been persuaded to do a couple of direct training contract applications over a weekend by a friend who pointed out I would be able to list legal experience on my CV now so would stand a better chance, and I had sent them off without really thinking about them. Out of 4 firms I applied to, 2 wrote back to invite me to assessment centres - one in September, and one the following January - so my friend’s hunch had clearly been right. But of course, it’s the hope that kills you.
I recall actually going up to London a total of 3 times for Thomas Harwood. Back then, that was unusual for assessment centres and interviews. The first two days, spaced a week apart, went swimmingly well. they mainly consisted of group exercises, of which I remember only an ethical dilemma exercise and a Dragons’ Den style pitch in teams.?
In the ethical dilemma exercise, there were 7 of us who were each assigned a role to play. We were meant to be passengers in a plane that was about to crash land in 20 minutes into the sea. The problem was that the lifeboat on board only had sufficient space, food, and other rations for six people. The person who had done the fit-out had been a fool! We were tasked with deciding who should be thrown into the sea to die. Our motley crew comprised the pilot, a nurse, a businessman, a firefighter, a priest, a teacher and the priest’s 17 year old son. Of course, as you can probably guess, after a short discussion, we made a unanimous decision to toss the priest overboard. As someone argued - the priest was the only person who was definitely going to heaven, so really it was the most obvious and fair thing to do. Even the priest himself couldn’t disagree with this faultless logic. We finished early and spent the remainder of the allotted time munching on biscuits and OD’ing on the free coffee in the meeting room.
The Dragon’s Den style exercise was a two person affair - I was paired up with “Adam” and given the unenviable task of pitching “flavoured lickable envelopes” to a panel of potential dragon investors. boy, that really sucked. I remember making some very iffy projections about i) the number of people who wrote letters in the UK by predicting a boom in hard copy correspondence, ii) the price we would be able to procure from a manufacturer for this insane product in China (assuming sub-minimum wage production costs), and iii) the ability to cheaply leverage online retail platforms to sell the product. We managed to get through the pitch without arousing too many suspicions and both of us got invited back for another day so I guess we got away with it.?
There must have been other tests and exercises but the only other thing I recall from those 2 days was the invite back for the 3rd and final day which would comprise 2 written exercises and an interview. The first exercise was a “spellcheck” exercise I did in a client meeting room that was probably a dyslexic person’s nightmare but was remarkably fun for me (that gives you an insight into the sort of person I am). I was told to review a contract for up to 40 typos and I found 41. Extra brownie points surely! Basking in a heady glow of success, I was looking forward to the 2nd task which came in the form of another contract handed to me by an HR admin assistant who looked about 14 years old. She shovelled a bundle of papers in front of me without giving any instructions. I asked “Is this like the first exercise?” and she nodded nervously before scurrying away.
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I turned the first page of the contract over and knew pretty much instantly I was in trouble. There were no typos anywhere. I read the whole damned thing about 5 times - it was a hotel services agreement - before nipping out to see if teenage HR grunt was still there. Nada. The entire client meeting floor was deserted and reception was downstairs and I didn’t have a lift pass. Great. Anyway, i sat there helplessly for the next 20 minutes after which a different HR bod galloped in and whisked me away to my partner interview. It then turned out that I had been meant to review the contract and then discuss away onerous terms from a service provider point of view during the first part of the interview. Ah. Sh*t.
I don’t quite remember what i said but i remember it not being very impressive. The rest of the interview - the personal chat and technical questions - strangely enough went quite well but I had a sinking feeling throughout that I’d botched it spectacularly by reason of some f*ck-up by HR.?
And so it proved when I got the call the next day. In fact, it was worse than I’d thought. I was told by a man from HR that I had been a leading candidate until the last exercise which I’d flunked and they’d eventually ranked me 7th out of all 1200 or so applicants. And of course unfortunately Thomas Harwood were only giving out 6 training contracts out that year. HR man even went as far as to say that had I performed slightly on the contract exercise I would have been a shoo-in. I pleaded with him and explained what had happened but he was impassive.?
I hung up the phone and cried for about 40 minutes straight outside of City Thameslink station. Had I received the offer there I would have had two years of law school paid for, plus funding for living costs, and my future sorted.
The tiny tiny tiny silver lining of course was the other assessment centre I had the following January but I couldn’t simply bank on that. as it was, I would now have to start the horrendous stress of applications again and sign up to the conversion course without any kind of funding or promise of a job afterwards…a ludicrous risk...
Part 4 to follow...