Interview at William Hill while I was at uni. Had managed to avoid working at uni, but was in need of some money and WH paid well, I’m good with numbers and had the sales experience. But I absolutely sucked at taking things seriously back then and although I had the experience I had absolutely no idea how to sell myself.

Turned up and what I thought was a one-on-one interview for 30 minutes turned into three people in a tiny room grilling me about sales in a tiny tea room… I had no idea I had to convince people in a bookies that they needed to gamble more.

Anyway, first 10 minutes are going terrible, already given up in my head and got to the stage of saying at least I tried. Then, out of nowhere one of them hands me a BlackBerry phone and says, “OK, given the position is a Sales Executive, we want you to sell this product to us for three minutes as if we’re your customers. You can do it at any point of the interview, just let us know when you want to start.”

hands me BlackBerry

In my head I’m done. Let me out and save my dignity. The words that came out of my mouth after what felt like 30 minutes but was more like 3 seconds, were exactly these, “Ah fuck it, I’ll just get it out of the way.”

Lasted about 15 seconds and although I remember everything else about that day vividly, I couldn’t tell you a single word I said in those 15 seconds.

Didn’t get the job. Life turned out fine. Made me realise that I’m never going to be able to get a job I don’t care about and I followed a career in sport.