Like me.

We all talked to everybody; any company that had an open sign-up list was white-collar-deep in applicants. This included companies that nobody had ever heard of, in industries too obscure to be the object of b-school case studies, who were sometimes so insignificant as to have no Internet presence.
Like Wyxter Trade, who hired me.

I remember the moment: A Wednesday with lots of rain. Fontainebleau looked gray and ill-used, and so did I. It was my eleventh interview and so far I had nothing to show other than a pile of those letters whose second paragraph starts with, "However,..."

They were interviewing in one of the classrooms; no cozy rooms at the local auberge for the two Wyxter interviewers. One was slight, long, bald, and disdainful. The other was small, aggressive, intense, and confused. Dark suit, light shirt, dark tie, like I was interviewing with IBM in 1975.

"Name?"

"Potts. Julian Potts."

"Nationality?"

"British and American."

The small guy pretended to nod and look at a paper, then stopped nodding and looked at another paper, and then another, and the pitch and rhythm of the paper shuffling started to increase to the point where I was afraid something spontaneous might combust.

"Mister Potts." The voice was so distant and disinterested that I almost didn't feel like I had to respond.

"Yes?" I liked that 'yes.' Confident, self-assured.

"Do you feel that you have learned something over this year about cross-cultural interactions? Do you feel competent to pick up the ball and run, even if you don't know the rules of the game or the shape of the playing field?"

"Huh?" Not so good. The 'yes' had been much better.