How To Fail At An Interview

Holloway Road

There is a slight distraction from shopping reviews in today’s post, although there is a link as I was applying for a job as a trainee accountant at the time and it is a review of the interview. It was such a funny moment and it has stuck in my mind all these years. Today I just laughed out aloud as I recalled it in a flashback moment at work!

This goes back some 35 years I had just left school and was intending to become an accountant. Actually I was being forced into it from my Cypriot Dad, as I really wanted to be a musician at the time. Anyway, he had set me up for an interview with a Cypriot based accountant company in Holloway Road, London. I had done all the background work to the interview and turned up looking spick and span. I knew I had the job, as it was a friend of the Greek Cypriot family who set it up.

I entered the interview room and was introduced to the head accountant who was introduced by his secretary and this is where I failed the interview instantly. She announced, “ Martin, Paul Yanakis” (Pull Yer Knackers), I just fell into a fit of laughter asking where she was joking, but she wasn’t., Hi name really was Paul Yanakis! The interview went ahead with an atmosphere of failure and I didn’t get the job of course. Well I didn’t want it anyway, but a got a great laugh out of it telling friends about it for 35 years.