A Close Call with Oka

I built a couple of legal teams during my career. In both instances the legal teams I recruited and trained were for the national offices in a developing or third world country.

Local laws and company policy required that the national legal team be staffed preponderantly with “local” talent. That was an onerous challenge in a country where the local law schools were not churning out large numbers of highly qualified law school graduates who could meet the demands of a super-major international energy company.

I always hosted a reception the evening before the day of the interviews. It provided a good opportunity for me to meet the candidates in a less intimidating, social context and to explain to all of them at once how the interviews would be structured and what I expected from each of them.

It was at one of those receptions where I met “Oka.” She was an absolutely stunning young law student, tall and svelte. She had one of the most captivatingly gorgeous faces I had ever seen.

My heart sank when she came up and introduced herself. She was poised and articulate. Her charms and dazzling smile were mesmerizing.

https://tuscl.net/photo/5880/

But on that particular night, I was hunting for top notch legal talent, not stellar poontang.

I can still recall thinking, “Fuck! I sure hope Oka does not emerge as one of my top candidates. It would be unfair to deny her a job offer just because she is so beautiful. But I damn sure don’t look forward to all the rumors that would fly about “the real reason” I offered her a job.”

Oka did very well in the interviews. Despite my trepidations, I felt she had earned a position among the finalists who would be invited for office interviews and to be tested for the open positions.

Oka was every bit as eye-popping when she showed up at the office the following week with the six other finalists. If anything, she looked even more amazing in the office as she had looked the prior week at the evening reception and in the interview at the law school campus.

Then came the tests. I had arranged for my assistant to provide each candidate with a unique alphanumeric identity which would be unknown to me. Each student was to use only this alphanumeric identity on the test and was told that putting their real name on the test would disqualify them. This enabled me to “blindly” grade the tests afterwards. Only after all the tests were graded would my assistant match up the tests to the individual candidates.

Out of seven finalists, I intended to make job offers to four.

Oka scored 5th highest overall and did not receive an offer (but was next on my list to receive an offer if any of my top four candidates did not accept the job offered to them).

I never saw Oka again after that day.

That was lucky for me and, knowing me, even luckier for Oka.