CV

When I decided to leave the Bar, I went to several job interviews, with my new suit and haircut, and polished shoes. I received several rejections, always for the same reason – lack of relevant commercial experience.

At one interview, after about the fourth complaint of my lack of relevant commercial experience, I lost my rag: “And if nobody ever gives me a job, I never will have any relevant commercial experience.”

Much more recently, I was invited to lunch by a prospective client, in one of the best restaurants in the City. They had asked me for a CV, but I decided not send one.

At lunch I apologised for not sending a CV, and said that it was fifteen years since anyone had asked me for one, so I needed time to update it, and think what to put in it.

They quickly said they did not need a CV.

The project was in ultra-deep water offshore Brazil, the hottest oil province on the planet, one that the entire oil industry wants to get into.

I could not resist it. “You do realise, don’t you, that I have never done anything in Brazil? You would see that from my CV.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter!” they replied. “All oil provinces are the same,” (a proposition I would have to disagree with), “Will you be able to help us?”

What a difference thirty years makes.