Stuffed into an overbooked flight.

A week after abandoning my Virgin Atlantic interview, I found myself herded — no, corralled — into a hybrid conference-ballroom-banquet-hall situation at the London Edwardian Hotel.

The carpets were patterned. The lighting unapologetic. The vibe: Pop Idol audition.

Then I stationed myself next to the nearest exit. Except, I was soon shepherded into the middle of the room, into the middle of an aisle, and into the middle of a tightly packed row. No leg room. No window seat. No emergency exit. Trapped.

This time, it wasn’t my watch setting off alarm bells.

183bpm had become 183aia (applicants in attendance). Give or take. I didn’t perform a head count. But someone did because the recruiters, somewhat politely, asked everyone still standing to leave — they’d run out of folding partitions and the 4-in-1 ballroom had reached maximum capacity.

Just like that. Pffoofff. 183 became 100. Or there about, let’s not get nit-picky.

That was my first mass culling. And I wished I’d been standing for it because I didn’t want to stick around for my first mass humiliation.

No such luck. For me, it was welcome aboard the absurdity that is an Emirates Open Day.

Caught in the same choreography

Looking up and down my row, it was like staring into an infinity mirror.

All around me, across five, ten, fifteen rows of applicants, I was one of the dozens of identical black-suited, red-lipped, hair-doughnutted, beaming, Pan-Am smiling applicants.

Then, as soon as the Emirates video concluded, I was stunned to silence as dozens of identical arms shot up. Each one asking a variation of the same identical question I had tucked up my identical sleeve.

For the first time, I saw what happened when everyone follows the same advice.

I was everyone and everyone was me.

I saw everything, on loop, one hundred times over.

For the next thirty minutes, I saw everything. On loop. One hundred times over.

And then I saw it all again — echoed in every one of my nineteen failed attempts.

Back at Virgin, I’d stared at my own reflection and seen a fraud. This time, I saw the choreography.

We weren’t just making the same mistakes. We were trapped by the same rules. Smile wide. Speak often. Perform confidence. Project charm.

We wore the same scarlet accessories. Recited the same laminated model answers through the same brittle, overbright voices. With our stiff buns tugged so tight it vacuum-packed all trace of individuality.

We weren’t applying. We were re-enacting. Not individuals, but a troupe.

And I had followed so many damn rules, I moved with doll-like precision, and was even monitoring my eye-accessing cues.

Trying to be perfect was exhausting and ineffective.

We weren’t just making the same mistakes. We were caught in the same choreography. Smile wide. Speak often. Perform confidence. Project charm.

Trying to be perfect was exhausting and ineffective.

Then another number occurred to me. The statistic that casts a great big shadow over every hopeful applicant…

…99% — AKA: The “Slag Heap”

I’d heard about the 99% failure club. But I’d never stared that number down in the flesh.

And if the numbers were true — if 99% really did fail — then the outcome had already been decided. Ninety-nine of us were walking out with nothing. Only one would leave with a job.

Which meant, we had already been mass eliminated. We just didn’t know it yet.

But, if 1% succeed, who was it? But, more importantly, how do recruiters figure it out?

That was the moment I finally grew up and transitioned into success.