have any bearing on the results of the Selection Board.”
The first page of the questionnaire is straightforward: name, address, date of birth. It then becomes more complicated.
1. What do you think are your best qualities?
2. And weaknesses?
3. What recent achievement are you most proud of?
These are big subjects for nine o’clock in the morning. I ponder evasive answers, wild fictions, blatant untruths, struggling to get my brain up to speed.
“Of course,” says Keith, as we begin filling out the forms, “you’re not obliged to answer all of the questions. You may leave any section blank.”
This suits me. I complete the first page and ignore all three questions, sitting quietly until the time elapses. The others, with the exception of Elaine, begin scribbling furiously. Within ten minutes, Ann is on her third page, unraveling herself with a frightening candor. Matt treats the exercise with a similar seriousness, letting it all out, telling them how he really feels. I turn to look at Ogilvy, but he catches my glance and half smiles at me. I turn away. I can’t see how much, if anything, he has written. Surely he’d be smart enough not to give anything away unless he had to?
It’s over after twenty minutes. Keith collects the questionnaires and returns to his desk. I turn around to see Ogilvy leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like a matinee idol.
Keith coughs.
“In just over ten minutes you’ll begin the group exercise,” he says, leaning to pick up a small pile of papers from the top right corner of his desk. “This involves a thirty-minute discussion among the five of you on a specific problem described in detail in this document.”
He flaps one of the sheets of paper beside his ear and then begins distributing them, one to each of us.
“You have ten minutes to read the document. Try to absorb as much of it as possible. The board will explain how the assessment works once you have gone into the second examination area. Any questions?”
Nobody says a word.
“Right, then. Can I suggest that you begin?”
This is what it says:
A nuclear reprocessing plant on the Normandy coast, built jointly in 1978 by Britain, Holland, and France, is allegedly leaking minute amounts of radiation into a stretch of the English Channel used by both French and British fishermen. American importers of shellfish from the region have run tests revealing the presence of significant levels of radiation in their consignments of oysters, mussels, and prawns. The Americans have therefore announced their intention to stop importing fish and shellfish from all European waters, effective immediately.
The document—which has been written from the British perspective by a fictional civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—suggests that the American claims are nebulous. Their own tests, carried out in conjunction with the French authorities, have shown only trace levels of radiation in that section of the English Channel, and nothing in the shellfish from the area that might be construed as dangerous. The civil servant suspects an ulterior motive on the part of the Americans, who have objected in the past to what they perceive as unfair fishing quotas in European waters. They have asked for improved access to European fishing grounds, and for the French plant to be shut down until a full safety check has been carried out.
The document suggests that the British and French ministries should present a united, pan-European resistance to face off the American demands. But there are problems. An American car company is one step away from signing a contract with the German government to build a factory near Berlin that would bring over three thousand jobs to an economically deprived area. The Germans are unlikely to do anything at this stage to upset this agreement. Ditto the Danes, who have an ongoing row with the French over a recent trade agreement. The Spanish, who would
The first page of the questionnaire is straightforward: name, address, date of birth. It then becomes more complicated.
1. What do you think are your best qualities?
2. And weaknesses?
3. What recent achievement are you most proud of?
These are big subjects for nine o’clock in the morning. I ponder evasive answers, wild fictions, blatant untruths, struggling to get my brain up to speed.
“Of course,” says Keith, as we begin filling out the forms, “you’re not obliged to answer all of the questions. You may leave any section blank.”
This suits me. I complete the first page and ignore all three questions, sitting quietly until the time elapses. The others, with the exception of Elaine, begin scribbling furiously. Within ten minutes, Ann is on her third page, unraveling herself with a frightening candor. Matt treats the exercise with a similar seriousness, letting it all out, telling them how he really feels. I turn to look at Ogilvy, but he catches my glance and half smiles at me. I turn away. I can’t see how much, if anything, he has written. Surely he’d be smart enough not to give anything away unless he had to?
It’s over after twenty minutes. Keith collects the questionnaires and returns to his desk. I turn around to see Ogilvy leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like a matinee idol.
Keith coughs.
“In just over ten minutes you’ll begin the group exercise,” he says, leaning to pick up a small pile of papers from the top right corner of his desk. “This involves a thirty-minute discussion among the five of you on a specific problem described in detail in this document.”
He flaps one of the sheets of paper beside his ear and then begins distributing them, one to each of us.
“You have ten minutes to read the document. Try to absorb as much of it as possible. The board will explain how the assessment works once you have gone into the second examination area. Any questions?”
Nobody says a word.
“Right, then. Can I suggest that you begin?”
This is what it says:
A nuclear reprocessing plant on the Normandy coast, built jointly in 1978 by Britain, Holland, and France, is allegedly leaking minute amounts of radiation into a stretch of the English Channel used by both French and British fishermen. American importers of shellfish from the region have run tests revealing the presence of significant levels of radiation in their consignments of oysters, mussels, and prawns. The Americans have therefore announced their intention to stop importing fish and shellfish from all European waters, effective immediately.
The document—which has been written from the British perspective by a fictional civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—suggests that the American claims are nebulous. Their own tests, carried out in conjunction with the French authorities, have shown only trace levels of radiation in that section of the English Channel, and nothing in the shellfish from the area that might be construed as dangerous. The civil servant suspects an ulterior motive on the part of the Americans, who have objected in the past to what they perceive as unfair fishing quotas in European waters. They have asked for improved access to European fishing grounds, and for the French plant to be shut down until a full safety check has been carried out.
The document suggests that the British and French ministries should present a united, pan-European resistance to face off the American demands. But there are problems. An American car company is one step away from signing a contract with the German government to build a factory near Berlin that would bring over three thousand jobs to an economically deprived area. The Germans are unlikely to do anything at this stage to upset this agreement. Ditto the Danes, who have an ongoing row with the French over a recent trade agreement. The Spanish, who would
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