At the tender age of 25, I was hired as a personal assistant to Mr. Biaz, pretty much just off the back of my performance on the Airforce presentation I’ve done - being at the wrong place at the wrong time, because I was never supposed to be presenting myself.

This all happened quickly as I visited Biaz Group’s office the following morning, where I met Gika at 10:00 appointment as promised the previous day. Gika was Mr. Biaz’s secretary, but to me, it seemed she was a very capable woman who did more than just scheduling and organising for Mr. Biaz.

“Let me explain, Mr. Poob -”

“Sorry ma’am, please just call me Poos”

“Right. Poos. The reason why asked you to come is Mr. Biaz has asked me to check if you have an interest in working in Biaz Group. He was rather impressed by your performance yesterday and felt there is a place for you in this company. How do you feel about that?”

Wow. Ok, I’m just an interpreter and I was happy with my work, and I made decent money per month. Interpretation work required me to travel and be on-site, which usually brought extra charge added on top. Translation work was something I could do anytime and all I needed was just a laptop that could run Word, so pretty much anything. Biaz Group is a big name company and working here was considered to be something prestigious by average people like me, and also the pay was supposedly good. It was quite puzzling how or why Mr. Biaz himself saw something in me and wanted me to work here, but this was an opportunity I felt I should grab. Well, if things don’t work out I could always leave and it will look nice on my CV, which will help me charge extra for my services when I get back to doing interpretation work again.

“I am interested ma’am. But to be honest this is quite unexpected and I’m not so sure what is expected of me. Would this have something to do with some translation work?”

“That will be your primary work for start. But Mr. Biaz is considering offering you a role of personal assistant”

“I’m honoured, but I don’t understand why he’d do that. I mean, of course, I’m grateful and flattered with such an offer, but I do not think I’ve done anything to warrant such a position. Also, I am not too familiar with what would fall under the work scope of a personal assistant”

“Let’s put it this way. Mr. Biaz has to travel around a lot. I, as a secretary, stay in the office and do support work that needs to be done in the office and take care of things according to his instructions during his absence. I am sort of his avatar in the office while he’s away so that Mr. Biaz can keep track of things while he’s traveling and be able to remotely respond to urgent issues.

“That sounds like a lot of work. So what would my role be as a personal assistant then?”

“You are to accompany Mr. Biaz wherever he goes. Sometimes you’d act as a translator during his meetings - but let me tell you, Mr. Biaz does not need translations, but sometimes it is good to have a translator as a ‘buffer’ between himself and the negotiation counterparts -, sometimes you may be asked to draft letters, emails, or be asked to do presentations in the meetings he attends. You are not expected to know everything technically, at least not at the start. You will not create the ‘content’ yourself so don’t worry about that. What Mr. Biaz liked was how you can improvise on the spot and talk about things you have no clue about for an hour”

“I kind of understand what you mean. This feels quite daunting but I appreciate the opportunity. So what kind of salary package could I expect if I took this job?”

“How much do you expect?”

“Considering I have to travel a lot, I’d first want to be clear about if those will be counted as overtime work - if outside of work hours, such as evening schedules -, if there would be extra pay if I need to travel for a few days, like if I cannot go home for a few days, etc.”

“We could count all that, but the nature of your work scope will make it quite bothersome to keep track of all this on an hourly basis. What we can offer is a fixed salary, which shall cover all this adequately over the course of a year”

“Right. If that is the case I will need some time to think over things and calculate how much would be an appropriate amount to cover all this work and travels -”

“If you can agree, we will offer you five thousand dollars per month as a start, but this will be for a probation period of three months. Should we - both you and us - continue the work together, we shall increase this to seven thousand dollars. Would that be adequate?”

Five thousand per month was already pretty good. It was an amount that I could earn myself as a freelancer if I was diligent and could continuously find good work, and seven thousand would be what I could make in a lucky month. Anything beyond that - if I can do well enough to warrant salary rise at some point and maybe even receive incentives - would be pretty damn good for me at this age.

“That sounds right for me. I will accept your offer”

“Great. I’m looking forward to working with you. Please take this employment contract draft, have a good look at it for the next few days. Mr. Biaz will be back in the office on Friday so you should come here again at Friday nine o’clock, and we will sign the contract then”

“Thank you. I’ll be looking forward to it”

So that’s how I got hired as Mr. Biaz’s personal assistant, by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.