Disinvestment

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.

Exploring the Faraway City

After the lull, comes the storm. Having smelled the rose after many months, the pure blood was upbeat now. He shifted gears very fast over the next few days. With a little more effort he was able to complete the routine work much earlier, giving him the time for testing his thoughts. He had made up his mind to seek his fortunes in another city, much like Vasco da Gama or Amerigo! New things meant new thrills.

 

He began browsing various websites for more information on the faraway city. Some of the more profound ones had listing of law firms. A few of them also gave out rankings. Some of the so called big and reputed firms also had their offices there. But this was unchartered territory for the pure blood and he was not inclined to take chances. He preferred to be cautious before making a choice. The reliability of random websites was also doubtful. To some extent, he thought aloud, credible information was likely to be covered by the more popular websites such as Legal500.com, Chambers & Partners etc. The pure blood did not want to be too selective either, so he had kept an open mind even with respect to the small and relatively lesser known firms.

 

He jotted down the names of the firms he perceived would possibly have opportunities for him. The next step was to get their contact details. Most law firms in India don’t have their own websites due to restrictions imposed by the Bar Council of India. Hence the only option left was to fish out the details from the websites he had scanned earlier. Some threw up the desired results but some did not. Over a period of nearly 2 weeks he was able to gather contact numbers and email addresses.

 

Now came the most crucial element of implementation – initiating contact through calls and emails. This appeared to be more time consuming and certainly cumbersome at times. Getting to the right person was the eventual challenge. At that time most law firms did not have an established human resources person, let alone a dedicated team. More than often, one person would have an additional responsibility to respond to job applications. And the replies were typical one liners thanking the pure blood for applying and mentioning that there was nothing to suit his profile at the moment. Although they would agree to keep his profile in their database, which initially was a glimmer of hope, similar replies from some more firms assured him that these were standard responses and involuntarily included in replies to job applications. Sometimes his emails would go unanswered. He sent reminders and forwarded the applications but to no avail.

 

He had carefully drafted the cover letter, which was his only chance of introduction. Somewhere he had read that a job application gets about 5 minutes time of attention of the recruiter, so the margin of error was very thin. He had taken equal pains to get his resume in order -after drafting, redrafting, proof reading, down sizing, improving fonts, spacing between lines and paragraphs, increasing page margins… he was able to get the content to 2 pages. This was also a result of his earlier research – the more crisp the CV the better chances of being read. Otherwise it wouldn’t take long to be deleted from the recruiter’s already overflowing inbox. This editing had consumed more than a week’s time before the pure blood was satisfied with the output.

 

In his own database, he had created columns for the researched data as well as the results of implementation. However, the results columns did not fill up as quickly as expected, rather it was slow and at times very frustrating. But a determined pure blood carried out relentlessly. His perseverance bore fruit after about 2 weeks when the first positive response came. The managing partner of a local firm requested her colleague to fix up an interview with the pure blood. The pure blood’s ecstasy knew no bounds that day.

 

The office break was round the corner by now. The pure blood was working full steam to get as many hits as possible. God helps those who help themselves, goes the saying - a consultant also happened to fix a telephonic interview for him. This was for an investment bank looking out for a legal person in their India office located in the faraway city. With 2 successes in 2 days, the pure blood continued his hunt. However, nothing much happened over the next few days and with the impending interview, he now changed tracks and got down to some serious preparation for the same.

 

 

Long Distance Call

After a hiatus of about 4 months, the pure blood was beginning to come out of his cocoon again. It was akin to a cricketer going for practice once again after an injury break. Only in this case, it was not an injury break so to say, but rather a heart break! After as many as 3 attempts which came a cropper, self doubt had gnawed his soul and crept into his otherwise sharp mind. Somewhere deep down he had accepted self-defeat. This had some sort of a depression effect on him and consequently he had withdrawn into a shell. He existed only for his office, flow of assignments keeping him busy, superior’s continuous delegation of work leaving no room for any other thought - all of which had now become quite the order of the day and did not require much application of mind. So this way continued his mind more mechanically than ever.

 

This went on till one afternoon when something, that was long forgotten and a fading memory now, jolted him out of his autopilot mode. It was a call from a faraway consultant. His profile had been spotted by this lady in another city. She had a suitable position in a law firm in that city – would he be interested – she inquired. This option was comparable to a call received by a budding cricketer from a different IPL franchise after being rejected by his own city franchise. Without the slightest hesitation he agreed to share his latest profile. Outside his office window, the rain had just stopped and a rainbow was vaguely visible.

 

True to her words, the consultant arranged for an interview the next Saturday. Although it was a working day for the pure blood, he decided to take a leave. He stayed put beside the landline all morning. The call came at the appointed time but confirmed his worst fears. His mobile’s connection was generally fluctuating due to frequent loss of tower and now he would be doomed. After three rings he had no option but to press the green button. (p.s. those were the good ol’ times of keypad phones!).

“Hello Good Afternoon!” were the first words that he blurted out, out of pure nervousness and miscalculations of the call on his mobile. It was just past 11 o’clock. Fortunately, the bad connection came to his rescue – on the other side an echo appeared to say “Hello, can you hear us?” The momentary confusion had given the pure blood quick time to regain his composure. He continued the rest of the conversation in his usual confident and convincing style. There were 2 interviewers on the other side and being on ‘speaker’, at times their voices garbled. There were some further disruptions due to the mobile connection, but by now the pure blood had picked up momentum and continued with élan.  

 

It was more than an hour and more than one call (landline was the last resort!) before the interviewers got a sense of satisfaction. The pure blood could feel it in their voice as well as the choice of words and expressions. While at the start it was more of probing, now it was more of agreement. They seemed to be opening up more and more. So he took the opportunity to ask more about the role and work. The interviewers explained to him in detail. The job description was different from what he had done and he knew that his past experience would not count much. Yet he was intrigued that he was being considered for it. He also played along and listened attentively. Finally they came to the moot point – would he be interested in exploring this opportunity. “Why not?” he burst out instinctively, enthusiasm ringing high in his tone. One aspect of life that he had imbibed quite early, and followed it to the letter, was that he would not join the bandwagon.

 

The interviewers showed their keenness and did not waste another second in inviting him to their office. But law firms being law firms, they kept silent on the travel cost aspect. The pure blood was a perfect opportunist as well. He had just discovered a new opening, an estuary of new opportunities. And he was in no mood to let it go. He told them quite commandingly that if they would wait for a few days, he would arrange for the travel on his own. It was a win-win situation for the interviewers as well. They signed off on a positive note. It was settled that the pure blood would let the interviewers know of his travel plan.

 

An idea was brewing in the pure blood’s now active mind. After hanging up he sat on his mahogany desk and closed his eyes. It was important to create a blueprint in his mind. He could then draw up a plan and put it into action.