How to Get on in Banking

While the Department of Finance official Mr Michael Tutty is no doubt an excellent candidate for the EIB job, there has been a peculiar emphasis in the media on his personal attributes. Basically we are given to understand that despite his impressive professional qualifications, skills and experience, he is at heart just one of the lads: "Close to Department colleagues, he stands a few rounds every Friday evening in their regular pub, O'Reilly's." The fellow also "enjoys" good wine, cooks occasionally for a close circle of friends, and appears to be something of a sports fanatic, involved in mountain cycling, hurling and tennis, though presumably not at the same time.

Is it just me or does anyone else find this kind of reporting a bit strange? Is this really how you get on in financial circles?

Say you or I were to (take it into our heads to) apply for a job at the European Investment Bank. You like the sound of the outfit. It appears to have a bit of class. Your chances should be better at the night-club if you can say you are "in line for a position at the EIB", even if you know the line probably stretches from Kinnegad to Renvyle and back. You are looking for a start.

Right. You fill in the form with a pencil butt and the minimum of lies and post it off. One morning a couple of weeks later you are nursing a mild hangover and still wondering if Offaly's decision to play Kevin Kinahan at full back was a wise move, when the EIB letter arrives asking you to "present yourself" at their offices for interview.

On the due day you have the hair cut while your mother presses the good suit. You make it to the EIB office in time and effect a successful entry to the interview room, i.e. you don't fall over. Introductions are made, and very shortly you are going through your carefully rehearsed spiel, pumping up your frankly pathetic career of ledger entries and general pen-pushing for a second-hand white goods importer in the west of Ireland into an awe-inspiring vision of corporate finance at vertiginous levels. Suddenly, you are interrupted. One of the interviewers wants to know if you "enjoy" good wine.

You are briefly flummoxed. Then you recall a night spent with Mick and Wally from the office, firing back gallons of some hideous plonk in a Claremorris bar for no other reason than it being a free promotion, and you decide to be frank and tell your interlocutor that wine is a complete waste of money and he would be better off sticking to a decent beer. Or any beer: "Wine rots your guts", you confide.

This gets a rather frosty response. You then take up where you left off, on the lofty heights of financial management, when the fellow on the right butts in to ask, in a heavy French accent: "Do you perhaps cook occasionally, possibly for a small circle of friends?"

What is it with these people, you wonder? Have you inadvertently applied for a position as catering manager, or is the EIB short of a banqueting chef? Sticking to your policy of honesty, you tell them that your mother does all the cooking ("we allow her that"), and it's hard enough to feed an Irish family of 14 without being expected to cook for a circle of friends besides, however small.

Next you are asked if you occasionally "stand a few rounds" for your work colleagues on a Friday evening after work.

For European financiers and economists, these people appear to know surprisingly little about the price of drink in Ireland. You fill them in, emphatically. You then tell them a few things about your work colleagues, not forgetting Wally's notorious stinginess. You tell the joke about the fellow "standing around" in the pub rather than "standing a round". They don't seem to get it. Your interview does not seem to be going well.

You think you are on safer ground when they ask you about sporting interests, as they next do. With little encouragement you tell them that Kilkenny were a lot more settled this year but might have made the mistake of underestimating Offaly. You enthuse about Nick Faldo lipping out from 60 feet on the 319-yard seventh at Crans-sur-Sierre during the European Masters. You express your amazement at the hammer thrower Robin Lyons being removed from the Canadian Olympic team after testing positive for anabolic steroids - you "thought steroids were compulsory for hammer throwers", you joke.

But when your interviewers realise you just watch all this stuff on television, that you have never actually participated in any sport since your schooldays (and then reluctantly), that you are not a keen tennis player or a keen anything player, the game is up.

You may know as much as the next person about Europe, investment and banking, but it is clear you are not cut out for the European Investment Bank.