What awaited in the next room were rows upon rows of small desks, wooden boards upon metal legs, each accompanied by a chair. Arthur Cessman walked to the front of the room, which was more like a hall, to the small podium up front that stood in front of a digital display. Once at the front he turned to face us. He said nothing but the instruction to find a seat was clear. It quickly became apparent that there was a seating plan, as each table had a small name card on it. As far as I could tell there was no rhyme or reason to where we were sitting. It certainly wasn’t in alphabetical order. I forced myself to stay calm as I looked for my seat. Arthur Cessman was still watching after all, and this could easily be another test. The first assessment had made it very clear that the assessors would be looking for any excuse to thin out the herd. There were still around two hundred of us candidates, and plenty of time to make mistakes. I found my name located near the back right of the hall, and sat down. I was sat next to Natalie Yamnson herself. She was staring straight ahead to the front of the room, as if she couldn’t see any of us. I, for one, inspected the contents of my desk. In addition to the name card there was also a pen and calculator, no doubt for the upcoming tests, sitting atop the table. The pen had the the Extech logo printed on it. I idly wondered if I could take it home as a souvenir.

I wasn’t the last candidate to find their seat, but Arthur Cessman didn’t ask anyone to leave so either this hadn’t been a test or we’d all passed. Or the test is yet to come.

A door at the front of the room opened and two men in black suits and sunglasses walked in. Unlike the guards at the door they didn’t have their guns out on display but the bulges in their suit jackets still made it very obvious that they were carrying weapons. They were someone’s personal security detail. Exactly whose personal security detail became very obvious when a third man, this one in a deep red suit, walked in. It was Isaac Yamnson, Chief Executive Officer and Imperial Steward of Coca-Cola. I stole a glance at my neighbour. Natalie Yamnson was staring ahead, unfazed by the appearance of her father.

But her presence has to be the reason he’s here, right?

“Good morning everyone, allow me to formally welcome you to the assessment day for the position of assistant graduate trainee intern here at Extech, and to congratulate you all on making it this far.” Isaac Yamnson spoke, his voice coming in through speakers, and the digital display behind him lit up, displaying the same Extech logo I was seeing everywhere along with the Coca-Cola logo. “As I am sure you are aware, your challenges are far from over. It pains me that we have to turn away so many promising candidates-” Liar. “but I commend you all for the work you have already put in. For many years the rising numbers of university graduates was thought of as a bad thing, as a strain on both providers of higher education and graduate level work. But it soon became clear that this was a good thing. The competition for jobs became so fierce that graduates had to adapt, evolve. I’m sure you all realise this but you are far, far more capable than you grandparents’ and even your parents’ generation.” I thought of my father’s hands, calloused and stained blue from working at the supermarket for years. He hadn’t made the cut, hadn’t made it into the world I was now trying to enter. In a way the world of retail was just as cut-throat. Early on one of my father’s co-workers had to miss a day of work due to an illness, just as a day off for a bad cold. That co-worker had been fired and replaced the next day. Since that day my father has never been ill. That was his thing, his unique selling point, the thing that kept him employed. It was just the same for us. It wasn’t enough to be good enough for the job. It wasn’t even enough to be exceptional, there were plenty of highly capable, highly intelligent graduates out there. No you had to make yourself irreplaceable to the company, you had to make your very existence and continued employment a vital necessity or you’d be out the moment you flagged behind. My shoulders ached and I felt slightly sick. Isaac Yamnson was still talking, slides with various images and diagrams had been flashing up on the screen behind him, and I hadn’t been listening to a word.

The nootropics.

Dammit I was slipping. The altercation and tension of the first stage had distracted me and I’d forgotten to take my next dose. I went to pull the small container of pills from one of the inside pockets of my suit jacket but stopped. What if there were assessors watching? What would they think of a candidate popping pills in the middle of a speech by such an important man, one of the most powerful in the world?

As a child I’d practised a few magic tricks. I think I’d seen a magician at a birthday party or something, back when my father still let me go to birthday parties. Either way I’d practised a little sleight of and stuff, misdirection and red herrings. It wasn’t much but I could surreptitiously pass small items from one hand to the other. When I was sixteen I’d had a major operation on both my arms. As part of my rehabilitation I practised these various tricks repeatedly to rehone my fine motor skills.

Dammit my mind was drifting again, but I had given myself an idea. I could palm a pill, like I would do with a coin or a handkerchief. With a few movements as I could, I extracted a pill from the bottle and transferred it to my mouth. There was no way I could drink some water without being noticed so I swallowed it dry, hoping my discomfort wasn’t as obvious as it felt. A few minutes of idle thought later and I felt the drugs kick in and my focus returned.

Maybe I should take them a little more often, just for today, to give me an edge.

No need to take any more right now though, not with everyone around me. I spent the remainder of Isaac Yamnson’s speech in rapt attention.

“I will delay you no longer.” Isaac Yamnson was reaching the conclusion to his speech, “as some of you have a long day ahead of you. I wish you all the best of luck, and may the best candidate win.”

Isaac Yamnson stepped back from the podium. Someone in the hall began to tentatively clap and we all joined in, awkwardly at first but with increasing gusto as it went on. Only Natalie Yamnson, sitting next to me and still staring dead ahead with an expression that betrayed nothing, did not clap. When Isaac Yamnson had left and the clapping had died out Arthur Cessman stepped back up to the podium.

“It is now time for the written assessment. The papers will be placed on your desk face down, do not turn them over until it is time to start.” A small army of people, each carrying a stack of papers, entered the room and began walking up and down the aisles, placing the papers face down on each desk as Arthur Cessman had said.

“Well then,” Arthur Cessman said when the paper-carriers had carried out their duty and the papers, “You have one hour, you may begin.” The hall erupted into a medley of shifting papers as two hundred of them were turned over at once. I quickly wrote my name in the indicated box, the last thing I wanted to do is forget something like that, and looked at the first question. The first and only question actually.

Not in your own words, outline the purpose of an assistant graduate trainee intern at Extech and what are the attributes of an ideal employee in this position? Finally provide evidence that you fulfil these attributes.

It was an essay question but… why was it worded so awkwardly? I read it a couple of times over to make sure. It seemed standard enough save for the first caveat: “not in your own words”. Whose words then? I was wasting time, especially as this was a handwritten test. Ever since the operation I had to take time to write or my handwriting would be illegible. I could type at rates of up to two hundred and thirty six words per minute but my handwritten rate was embarrassingly low.

But I couldn’t come up with an answer as to who they wanted me to quote or paraphrase for this question. I glanced around to check if anyone was watching me and palmed a couple of more pills into my mouth. I swallowed hard. I needed an edge. I needed something, anything.

The drugs hit and the answer hit me moments later. They want me to quote Isaac Yamnson. In fact I think they wanted to me quote the speech that he had just given and I had ignored half of because of my distracting withdrawal symptoms. But I had heard the end of his speech. As part of my research into Extech, or more accurately my research into the Coca-Cola hierarchy above Extech, I had come across a speech that Isaac Yamnson had given some years ago at a graduation ceremony at a university, my own actually. I thought the speech was slightly off. It wasn’t really a congratulatory speech, it was closer to advice. Yes the drugs flowing through my blood were helping me, I could recall the speech, it was Isaac Yamnson’s thesis on what made a good graduate employee.

Which is basically what this question is asking me. The last half of the speech he had just given, the half that I’d listened to, matched that speech from five years ago. I set to work, transcribing Isaac Yamnson’s words, taking care to ensure that my writing was a legible as possible.

The final part of the question, the part that actually asked me to write about how I fulfilled Isaac’s Yamnson’s shopping list of ideal employee traits, was easy. I had plenty of time to practise making myself sound like I fulfilled criteria when filling in job applications and it was time to make use of that experience.

Sure I can work in a team.

And I can work independently.

Oh yes I can take the initiative but I will always make sure to have permission before I do anything.

Yes the continued dominance of Coca-Cola is more important to me than my own health

This was simple stuff. When Arthur Cessman called for pens down I looked back over what I had written, as satisfied as I could be with it.

The technical assessment was more standard, with a series of questions based on logic and maths. I was lucky a calculator had been provided for us. While I didn’t pay too much attention to anyone else, I didn’t want to be accused of cheating, I was fairly sure Natalie Yamnson never once even looked at her calculator.

Why was she here? As the daughter of such an important man she would have been trained up to be the perfect company representative. There were many rumours that Isaac Yamnson had many children, but Natalie had been the only one he deemed worthy to be seen in the public eye. She was a genius, the sort that could rival a computer in pure mathematical power, and apparently possessed exceptional physical abilities. She probably did all of this without drugs and body modification either. She was almost certainly the favourite to get the job, but then why was she even here in the first place? Why was she here fighting for a job?

The technical assessment passed without incident, I was fairly confident in it as I could answer the computing based questions as well as the maths. My research into logistical theory proved itself useful as well.

But it’s not enough just be capable… You need to be super capable, ultra capable, beyond- I palmed another pill into my mouth. I was losing focus.

Arthur Cessman called out “pens down” once again and the hall echoed as two hundred plastic cylinders hit the wooden desks.

“Thank you all.” Arthur Cessman spoke again when the papers had all been collected up, “Please follow me to the next room, where you will wait for your interviews.”

For the second time that day we, the candidates, all moved as a sluggish mass after Arthur Cessman.

This is it, the time to make a truly good impression. I, along with the other candidates, made our way deeper into the innards of Extech.