Biggest opportunity I've blownNot Alan Partridge tells us: "I was once offered the chance to co-present a programme on national radio. Audience of millions, but blew up spectacularly, my entire contribution being the rustling of paper in the background. I was that bad, I have since burned my copy of the pilot show." Tell us about your big break, and how you messed it up.
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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 3 Apr 2014, 14:22)
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BidnessmanWhen I was fresh out of university and jobseeking, I flitted through a series of uniformly menial temp jobs, some involving languages. One day I got a call from one of my recruiters saying a French translation firm was looking to set up a branch in London but wanted to start small, with one person manning the phones, taking orders, placing orders, doing the accounts and maybe doing a bit of translation themselves if they had the time. This recruiter thought I would be the right man for the job.
I turned him down because I knew nothing about accounting, my experiences with project management had been stressful in the extreme and it sounded like I would be working an 80-hour week for well under an 80-hour-a-week salary.
Years later I got a temp-to-perm position in a small translation firm run by a husband-and-wife team, but she was the only one in the office until I arrived, as he worked in the City. There were two people in the company when I started, and now there are over 200. They have offices in New York, Germany and even Australia.
So I was basically given the opportunity and funding to run my own start-up. Granted, most of the money would have gone to the parent company, but it might have gone huge and I could be sitting at the head of a global empire by now. Alternatively, I might have been cack at running and office and might have left after six months. I still wonder what would have happened, though.
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.Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 3 Apr 2014, 15:35,
3 replies)
I wonder what would have happened.(
edjogs Collared doves are shit., Thu 3 Apr 2014, 17:06,
closed)
If it is any consolationAny start up headed by you would have ended up a skid mark on your resume.
(, Thu 3 Apr 2014, 17:08, closed)
I don't know.There are start-ups and start-ups. This one definitely wouldn't have fit the wanky trendy media profile of all those dotcom bubble start-ups that crashed and burned in the 90s.
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.Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 3 Apr 2014, 17:16,
closed)
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