All the jobs I've never had - Foreign & Commonwealth Office

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I can think of few jobs as prestigious as working for the Foreign Office. For example, I would love to drive around in a car with tinted windows and diplomatic number plates. However, my dreams of joining the Foreign Office fast-track scheme were short-lived.

I remember finding the application form relatively easy, although I am sure that nowadays the questions are far more rigorous. After successfully completing the application form I was invited to a first round of testing in a community hall somewhere in the West Midlands.

Although I am no maths genius, I do enjoy the occasional puzzle, and I lapped up the numerical and verbal reasoning tests set by the FCO. As I recall, I was sitting next to a Cambridge maths undergrad and I felt quite smug as I glanced at his answer sheet littered with errors.

A few weeks later I was informed that I had successfully got through to the next round (who knows whether the Cambridge bloke had made the grade too). I felt confident as I took my place in yet another draughty hall. One of the challenges we were set was to design a web page to provide help following a natural disaster on a fictional island. Gift! I thought. What could be easier?

However, my smugness was short-lived. For reasons that were never made clear I didn't cut the mustard. Maybe I put one too many hyperlinks on my web page...

A good friend of mine did make it into the FCO. After several months of security checks he started work in London. Since then he has worked in several exotic locations, although his current place of work is rather too dangerous for my liking.

I think that if you a truly willing to be relocated to anywhere in the world, then the FCO offers wonderful career prospects. But if, like me, you are a bit of a softy at heart then perhaps think twice before embarking on the lengthy recruitment process.

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