Ten years ago today I went for a job interview and didn't get it.
I should have got it. It was a specialist role and I was ideally qualified with ten years of relevant experience. Careerwise it would have been a major step up, much closer to the heart of things. I'd also been alerted to the existence of the vacancy by the organisation in question, which I took to be a positive sign. I filled in all the paperwork diligently, taking seriously all the faff about person specs, motivations and key skills. I gave what I thought was a decent interview, backed up by several carefully chosen examples of successful personal behaviours. And then I waited for notification I was the successful candidate.
It didn't happen. The envelope that arrived in the post was a thin one, the signal that it contained a single rejection letter rather than the anticipated thick wodge of information. I sighed and readjusted my horizons.
I knew who'd got it. As I was walking out of the interview I'd unexpectedly bumped into the only other person with a similar level of competence, someone who'd worked alongside me several years previously. They'd always been the sort of person who changed jobs to further their career, and here they were stepping back into my world a couple of rungs higher than before. I deduced they must have got the job instead because they'd done a better interview than me. Admittedly there had been one question I'd not been entirely happy about, the one I should have predicted but instead blundered into giving an answer that probably invalidated my application. Ah well.
I rate that failed job interview as one of the most important turning points in my life. If I'd got the job I'd have gained responsibility, better achieved my potential and ended up somewhere inherently fascinating. I'd also have ended up travelling a lot more, faced astronomical deadlines and - the way things turned out - been allocated a suboptimal portfolio. Instead I continued in my existing job which had a lot more independence, a far easier workload and a much better redundancy policy. I'm only where I am today because I had the good fortune to mess that interview up.
Which got me wondering what have been the other key turning points in my life. Days which ended on an entirely different path to the way they'd started. I made a list.
Jun 1964 Mar 1965 Feb 1967 Nov 1969
Jul 1973 Apr 1974 Mar 1976 Jan 1977 Aug 1977 Nov 1977 Nov 1979
Jun 1981 Dec 1982 Mar 1983 Jun 1983 Jun 1984 Aug 1986 Oct 1986 Jun 1987
May 1991 Aug 1991 Oct 1991 Nov 1991 May 1993 Aug 1997 Jan 1998 Dec 1998 Nov 1999
Apr 2001 Jul 2001 Aug 2001 Sep 2002 Mar 2004 May 2007 Mar 2008 Dec 2009
Aug 2011 Jan 2016 Jun 2016 Apr 2017
Mar 2020
It was too long a list. It included days like the first time I learned to use a computer, the day I was told I needed glasses, the day I passed my driving test, the day my parents confirmed they were moving to Norfolk, five job interviews, Brexit and the pandemic. I thought it was interesting how the key dates clustered in the centre of the list, roughly between the ages of 10 and 45, and how things have become more set in their ways since. But it was clearly a list in need of slimming down.
I tried to pick out the really significant bifurcation points. I managed to get it down to twelve.
Jun 1964
Dec 1982 Jun 1984 Aug 1986
May 1991 Jan 1998
Apr 2001 Jul 2001 Aug 2001 May 2007
Aug 2011 Apr 2017
I started with the most important date of all, nine months before I was born, when a ridiculously unlikely set of circumstances conspired to make me who I am today. The next truly significant date is the one where I got my university place, then there's the day I finally settled on a career. Three of the other dates are job interviews - two successful, one not - and one's the day my last job let me go. The day I met the Ex has to be in there - undoubtedly my biggest roll of the dice - thankfully balanced by the day I met BestMate. All twelve of these moments conspired to send my life in a different direction, I think successfully... even if it didn't look like it at the time.
I'm intrigued to see that 'years ending in 1' are very much over-represented, specifically the middles of 1991, 2001 and 2011. It makes me a bit nervous that summer 2021 might conspire to continue the pattern, but thus far nothing's cropped up to knock me off course. The most concentrated burst comes in spring and summer 2001 when a change of job propelled me to London, a moment which very much divides my life into 'Before' and 'After'. And the fact there's another August in that list means, sorry, tomorrow's going to be yet another introspective anniversary blogpost.
I can slim it down even further to five key years that divide up my life into six distinct chunks.
19
86 19
91 19
98 20
01 20
17
I look at that list and it's like looking at my lottery numbers, a high level summary of my life to date, defined by the years when fate showed its hand.
I don't expect you to be especially excited by this, nor inordinately interested in the minutiae of my life choices.
But I wonder if you've ever sat down and looked at your own life in the same way, identifying the key moments everything changed and wondering what might have happened if they hadn't. We are none of us entirely in control, even if we like to think we are.
