British railways

Yesterday I got up at 5am to get to London for an interview at 9am.

Considering I normally only wake up around 9am this wasn't easy. So to help, I shaved the evening before.

The shave was extremely close. So close, in fact, that I had a few cuts which were still visible yesterday evening. And this was from electric shaving!

I reached the station for the 6.33 train. It would get into London around 8.20 leaving me plenty of time to get to the interview (near Covent Garden).

Except. The train just stayed there until it was cancelled.

I went across the platform to another train which had pulled in. This was going to another mainland London station. Eventually.

Whilst I was on the train, as the time approached 9am, I realised I wouldn't reach London in time. So I phoned the company I was seeing and gave the receptionist a message that I would be late.

Just after 9am I reached the London station and then had to join a rather long queue for taxis.

Fortunately, despite the length of the queue it only took about five minutes before I reached the front and could get a taxi.

I don't remember so many roadworks in London, and I only left five months ago. But the route the driver took seemed to pass all the roadworks and this added to my anxiety.

Anyway, after 10 minutes I reached the office.

When I reached the interview room I apologised to the interviewers (there was two of them) about my delay. Simultaneously, however, one of the interviewers apologised to me. Apparently he was late too, having gone to the wrong office!

A few years back I use to go to extraordinary steps to avoid these delays. But nowadays, in the UK, it's accepted that our transport infrastructure is very poor. Delays are inevitable. At least, I was able to phone ahead and they got my message.

From a not-very-good start the interview went well. They said as much at the end. Turns out they've been interviewing for over two months and haven't appointed anyone yet.

They stressed that although I had interviewed well they would still need to review and decide if I should go to the next stage.

This stage would be a competency test. Oh Fuckly Fuckington. I hate these for three reasons:

1. I have a degree in electronics, that probably puts me in the top 2 - 5% of the population. So, there's really no need to test my numerical and verbal reasoning skills.
2. If you need to assess my personality talk to me, at say, an interview. There's no need for Myers-Briggs test. And as for Belbins, just ask me (incidentally my Belbin types are: Team-worker and Co-ordinator).
3. I'm not very good at them.

Actually, I have managed to do very well at them. In fact a few years ago I did very well at one for a major consultancy, much to my surprise. I fluffed, however, the third interview. The reason I did so well at them was that I bought a book on GMAT testing and went through the exercises.

Looks like I'm going to have to dig out that book and go through them again.

The annoying thing is that even if you do well on the IQ-type tests (and there is a danger that you fail because you score significantly higher than their profile requires) you can still fail because the tests suggest you're the wrong personality-type for their profile.