Goldman Sachs didn't want me.

I phoned them for a debrief and the lady who debriefed me said something along the lines of me not having enough "possession" or something (?) and not showing enough ability to work in a team. Other than that, everything was great, she said.

To say the least I was extremely angry and bewildered at this. I said some good stuff about teamwork in the interview and if they wanted to know more, if they wanted to make it clear that working in a team is the number one thing at GS (which it apparently it is) then they should have pushed harder - or, at the very least, done some sort of group exercise! I mean, come on! They value teamwork but don't do a group exercise?

I'm not any less upset about this, because the fact is I can work in a team and I can do that job as well as or better than everybody they interviewed. This stinks. This all gives me the impression that there was some other reason they didn't want to accept me, and they didn't want to tell me what it was.

My second IBM interview is in Portsmouth on the 5th of December, they say, oh, and bring along your passport. They say this in an email on 23rd November.

I don't have a passport. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get hold of one at such short notice is? The answer is: amazingly. To simply get a passport takes three weeks plus (and £42) at this time of year - that's just giving your application form in at a Post Office and waiting for it to come back. The only way to get it faster (if it's your first passport, which this is) is to go to a Passport Office (the nearest to me is Peterborough), pay £28 extra, and have a guaranteed turnaround within a week. Great, I think. So I just need to make an appointment on, say, Friday 25th November or earlier.

Oh wait, it says. To get your passport you also need to bring in your birth certificate. Fine, I say, I have one of those. No, it says. Your full birth certificate. It has your parents' names on it too. I don't have one of those. So I have to go online to the General Register Office of England and Wales and order it. Ordinarily that's £11.50, but I have to pay £16 extra because I need it so quickly.

Because I manage to order it so quickly, that birth certificate arrives through my letterbox at 10:45am on the 25th of November. My appointment is in Peterborough at 1pm. Luckily, I manage to make it there just forty-five minutes late.

So, in conclusion, counting bus fare and train tickets too, IBM cost me £75.90 extra to get my passport at such short notice. If they'd mentioned that I'd need my passport in an earlier email, I could have saved all that money.

Is it really that unusual not to have a passport these days?