I’m a Self Starter, Twisted Self Starter

I was a bit cheeky recently and went for an interview. It wasn’t easy as the Interviewer had two pages of questions to select from and you knew there was going to be no mercy. There was a steady flow of random questions:

“What do you know about banking products?”

“What do you know about credit default swaps?”

“What do you know about derivatives?”

“Have you audited hedge funds?”

“What do you know about FX? What affects FX rates?”

“Have you ever dealt with a difficult situation?”

“Do you know about liquidity reviews?”

“Have you ever asked questions to dealers?”

“Have you ever audited a treasury function?”

“Do you like working in a team or independently?”

“How do you deal with deadlines?”

“Have you audited financial controls?”

“Have you audited discretionary portfolios? How would you go about it?”

“Tell me a situation where you have had to pay attention to detail?”

“Tell me about a situation where you have changed someone’s opinion?”

“Tell me about a situation or outcome which was successful?”

Then there was this gem; “you have more audit experience than me, is that an issue?”

However, the real pièce de résistance was this:

“Are you a self-starter?”

My face dropped at this point! After all these questions I would have thought it would have been obvious if I was a self-starter! And believe me, after all this, working in a garden centre and the quiet life has never looked so attractive.