The pure
blood had a busy festive season. Although he tried his best to take out time
for his studies, yet undue client pressures and chores at home somewhat took a
toll at times. Visits to relatives and a steady stream of guests and visitors
added to the time constraint. Since this was a new area for him, with every
passing day he was getting nervous. His whole plan of targeting the faraway
city would receive a setback if he was unable to crack this one.
He has
researched extensively on the internet to make himself familiar with the
subject. In fact the website of the interviewer company had all the requisite
information. He downloaded as much as he could on to his desktop in office. In
those days, laptops had not yet made an entry in his firm. It was not safe to
save a lot of material not related to his assignments. His desktop could hardly
be called ‘personal’ except that it was placed on his work station. Anyone
could access it with the password generously shared with colleagues.
He also
needed printouts of some material which he could read only at home. This posed
another challenge since the room housing printers in his office also housed
other staff. Either he dared to do it right under their nose or he had to wait
for it to be devoid of them. He chose the latter. For that he had to wait till
late in the evening. This was not feasible any day now since he was not the
only one facing the client heat. Many other colleagues too stayed late and he
felt it useless to wait endlessly for them to pack up. At last his opportunity
came on a late Saturday afternoon. Office was half day on Saturdays and most of
the staff cleared out by 3 p.m. He double checked to ensure that no one else
was around and furtively clambered the stairs to printer room. He switched on
one of the computers. Since most of them were quite old it took ages to boot.
Finally once it was ready, he logged in and began taking the prints. While his
prints were going on, he heard the creaking of the stairs leading to the room.
His heart
skipped a beat. He quickly assimilated the printed papers below some of his
client papers. Soon the office in-charge stepped in. Since it was not uncommon
to find the pure blood in office at that hour, it did not raise any doubt in
the mind of the office in-charge. He merrily chatted for a few minutes and then
went about his assigned duties. The rest of the printing was uneventful. With a
bag brimming with papers, the pure blood stepped out of office. He poured
through the papers the next day, it being a Sunday. He had carefully avoided
any engagements that day and devoted time for final preparation for his
upcoming interview next week.
He had
taken half day leave on the day of the interview. He patiently waited for the
call at the appointed time. Keeping in mind the previous debacle, he had
categorically instructed the consultant to convey to the interviewer to call on
his home landline number. The loud ringing of the phone made him jump a bit. He
picked up and got into the act immediately. There was a lady at the other end with
a soft pleasant voice, who introduced herself as a manager in the legal team.
After that she asked the pure blood to run through his resume, which he did.
She asked him about his experience in drafting contracts relating to international
financial transactions. He upfront mentioned that he didn’t have any but since he
had read up he was familiar with the terms. She patiently heard and also
mandated that experience in their area was a preference and not a pre-requisite
for the position on offer. As the interview progressed, she was neutral to the responses.
The pure blood was not sure where this was heading.
Once the
regular questioning was done, she began explaining the role played by the
company’s office in the faraway city. The company, being a multi-national and
having presence in multiple jurisdictions required various kinds of research
and standard agreements to be drafted. These were generally carried out by the
team at this office. Since the company’s global operations had increased manyfold in recent times, they were required to expand their team size to meet the
growing demand. The position involved limited interaction with some other
lawyers within and was generally backend in nature. She then asked him bluntly
if he would be interested in such kind of profile where there not much
involvement of Indian laws and the requirement was to carry out standard
research and draft standard contracts with pre-defined templates. He was
stomped. All the research, effort and time spent on planning for this
opportunity with the world’s leading investment bank seemed going down the
drain. It appeared that essentially this office was an outsourcing office.
After some further probing and discussion, which reaffirmed his conclusion, he
signed off after seeking time to think it over. Internally, though, he knew it
was over and he would have to make his scheduled trip to the faraway city with
not much in hand.
