Page 49 - James Caan - The Real Deal

5 · Finding My Way

turned up for the initial interviews, that’s when the job got
interesting for me. If they were good enough, we would put them
forward to the client for consideration, so it was my job to find
out all I could about their suitability.
Dealing with the candidates was definitely the best part of the
job. Interviewing someone you’ve never met before is fascinating,
and, being quite cheeky, I’d always ask questions that the person
sitting next to me wouldn’t have bothered with. I would really try
to get into the candidates and understand a bit more about them.
Where my colleagues might write down: Secretary, forty words a
minute, shorthand, lives in Clapham, I’d want to get a bit more
detail. I’d want to know what she had done before. What she had
liked about the job. And what hadn’t she liked? What did she
really want to get out of the new role? There was definitely
something about that interaction that played to my strengths.
Finding out that I was good at talking to people and could get
away with stuff other people couldn’t was great for my confidence.
Once I’d placed a few candidates and earned a bit of commission,
I could afford nicer clothes and go to nicer restaurants. Things
were starting to click.
I decided to use some of my money to buy my first car, a
second-hand MG Midget. Like a lot of teenage boys, I had
miraculously acquired the ability to drive without needing to take
lessons, so I started driving on my provisional licence before I’d
technically passed my test. The car impressed my mates, and it
impressed girls, too. One of the unexpected benefits of choosing
the fashion sector was that a lot of the applicants were female. And
being upfront and growing in confidence, if I liked a girl I asked
her out. I found it easy to get dates and that in turn also boosted
my confidence.
For a seventeen-year-old, life was pretty near perfect – money,
clothes, cars, girls, clubs – whatever I wanted, I could pretty much
have. It certainly beat studying for A levels I would never use. I

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