As luck would have it, it had to be M (Please see A Trip to Hell - Part I) who presided over the committee that interviewed me soon for promotion to the next grade. That was the first ever promotion interview I attended.
I was the youngest and the junior-most candidate. Therefore, I was the last candidate to be interviewed. (Now I recall bemusedly that it was so at every promotion interview I had attended in my life!) The panel was understandably tired after a series of interviews. As for me, I had waited the whole day for my turn. It was 7.30 pm when I was called in.
As soon as I stepped in, the Chairman turned to his colleagues (So far away in time, I do not recall who these worthies were, nor does this matter one bit for the completeness of this story) and said, ‘This is Mr Rajagopalan who fell out with his boss about the adverse remarks made in his CR. He is lucky that I intervened and saved him.’
M then proceeded to describe in detail the sequence of events described in A Trip to Hell - Part I and his own version of the ‘Operation Rescue KTR’ that he had launched.
I had just to sit back and listen to the harangue.With that, he had sealed my fate in the interview. For, no other member of the panel posed me any question. The Chairman of the panel too did not.
This must have been the only interview where the candidate was dismissed by the interview panel without giving him a chance to utter a word. The result of the interview was, predictably, negative.
This narrative would not be complete if I did not add with a hint of pride that in every single interview that I attended in my career after that non-interview, I had performed to my satisfaction and got selected on practically every occasion. Thanks are due to the chairmen and members of the panels of interview who did ask me questions and did allow me to speak : )
3 comments:
pity that people can;t keep the personal separate from the official! when will that type of professionalism enter our system?
Molly, I too am guilty of not being able to '... keep the personal separate from the official ...'
[After some episodes in my official life were posted, I thought it was cheap. if not mean, of me to have done that. I have decided against making any more posts in the series.]
The old and experienced are valued because the raw might learn from them. To deny the benefit of such education to the newer generations is unkind of the elderly.
I understand that you have had a successful life as a bureaucrat/banker [?].
Few that have experience of life have the gift of communication; especially in bureaucracy. You have the gift....
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
The elderly could help the young learn that all stoves do not scald.
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