MISFORTUNE IN THE 1980s
9178 Mentor 1 - Consultancy after ComputerLand
It was a big shock having to leave ComputerLand. I think it was as much a shock to my staff, who tried to rally round me; but there was nothing they, or I, could do.
As I knew this was coming, I had spent a number of nights previously running off the names and addresses of all the local prospects; and letters to each of them -- almost 1,000 in total -offering my services in consultancy.
As there was a significant shortage of IT expertise in the small organisations on this list, I expected to get hundreds of responses. In practice I got barely one or two. Why this was I don't know. Possibly these organisations had already realized that the small independent consultants, such as I had just become, were cowboys and scam artists rather than experts. Unfortunately, I had relied on this consultancy to save my bacon after the failure at ComputerLand. Clearly it wasn't going to do this. In practice I literally had only two prospects. One of them turned into a short-term customer, but I only earned a few hundred pounds; and even this was very hard earned, and begrudged by the customer. The other one only went as far as my quoting a very reasonable price before it abandoned me.
Thus it was, for almost six months, I languished in unemployment. I maintained my IT contacts by going to various seminars run -- for free -- by local software suppliers. This may have temporarily raised my spirits but it brought in no money whatsoever. At the end of the day I had lost, on paper at least, £65,000; though my £25,000 income over the previous year I suppose could be offset against that.
Perhaps the worst thing was that it destroyed my friendship with lan for the best part of a decade.
As a result I started aggressively looking for a new job. This time it did not take just three months to find, but nearly six months. At that time, once more, I had a number of reasonable offers. One of these was as main board director of printing company located in North Yorkshire. It seemed attractive on paper, but I was nervous that the internal politics looked to be horrendous. By then I was allergic to any form of politics and there were a number of other similar jobs on offer.
The only interview which stuck in my mind was a morning interview with consultants for one of these posts. This stretched on for hours and I found myself going late to the afternoon matinee at the National, with Pat. This was bad enough, but we were in the front row and I found myself squeezing along the front row, within a matter of feet of Judy Dench who was acting heart out in the brilliant production of Antony and Cleopatra. Anthony Hopkins played opposite her. I had been let in late because the first act was very long, but I am not certain Judy Dench appreciated this.
Even worse, a few weeks later I went with Sarah to see a production of Hamlet in which Judy Dench was playing Gertrude, the Queen. This time I made certain of getting in before the performance started -- except that I hadn't noticed that it was starting half an hour earlier than I had expected. Accordingly, once more, we had to pass in along a full row while Judi Dench was making her grand entrance. I regret to say that, as it was the first night, we were reported in the Guardian as being an unruly troop of businessman who entered late and destroyed her entrance. Still, it is not often that you get your performance as a member of the audience reviewed by the Guardian!
At the end of the day, though, I decided to take a job as account director with Mentor. This was a subsidiary of the Provident Financial Group, so it was well funded and hopefully stable. It was in a field which I thought had a future, that of CBT (Computer-Based Training).
Although the title was Account Director, it soon became obvious that the job was really senior salesperson. But, having been successful in this regard at IBM, I thought I should be skilled enough to handle this.
The route to this, the recruitment round, was interesting in itself. The first part of the screening was a half day at a hotel at Heathrow; where the recruitment consultants screened myself and three others in a group. As I liked the others, I thought this boded well. Moving to the second stage, this was an individual interview at the consultants' home office in Altringham.
The context of this was quite positive personally. The previous night I and Pat had seen the London production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Stephen Sondheim is one of my all-time greats, and Follies was really marvellous. Buoyed up by this, we drove up the following morning, in the best of spirits. After a very positive interview, I get on well with recruitment consultants in general, we went to my parents for the weekend. It all boded well for the future.
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