Well there's not really been a lot to report of late, it's all just the same old, same old really.

I'm still not working, although I came close. I attended a series of interviews with HBOS, three rounds of two people each time in the order of:

• Technical Test & Chat
• Chat with Support Manager.
• Chat with Testing QA manager
• Chat with Project Manager
• 2nd Technical Test & Chat
• HR interview.

Everything seemed to go well until the 2nd technical interview which was unexpected and my mind went blank on a couple of simple questions. However I think I muddled through on that and at least demonstrated I knew what I was talking about.

It all went a bit wrong with the HR interview though. Normally HR will just chat to you to see if you're a pscho or liar, this particulr HR interview was more technical experience based.

It started off well with the usual 'who are you' and 'what have you done' type questions. No problem there.

Then she moved onto the old 'What's you're worst project' questions. Again, no problem, not every project has been a smooth success you know, but none have been a complete failure... however bizarrely this seemed to be a problem.

The HR woman just couldn't grasp that I'd never been involved in a failed project. I tried to go into specific examples of how difficulties in my projects were overcome, you know, stuff like informing the client, revisiting requirements and code, calling on extra resources, offering to help other teams, etc.

All good stuff I thought.

But she pushed for better examples of this in action.

OK, I thought I'd covered that, so I re-iterated with another example, clearly telling her it was another example and what I learnt from the experience.

But she wanted to know more and thought it was the same (first) example.

So I re-iterated the same stuff again, introducing the perspective of 'the client' and how to cause as little disruption as possible', how to approach impending and blind issues, etc. again making a point of saying this was the second example, and that I've been in similar less intense situations, you know, the working until the last train leaves (or catching the night bus home, even - and here's the key - when it isn't my project).

But she wanted more detail. Unbelieveably this still wasn't enough.

There is no more f*cking detail!!! What, you want me to make stuff up?

I still can't understand it, I've given here concrete examples of very tricky and hairy situations, but because I've never had a project fail it didn't seem enough.

So I didn't get the job. The official line is that I don't have enough experience.

I'm sorry? 11 years solid commercial experience (over 5 years of which was on a high volume real-time trading application), along with 3 extra part years before this (so 14 years total) isn't enough experience for what essentially sounded like an integration programming role (so something similar to many of the tasks I had to perform in my 3.5 years at ICOS)?

You've got to be kidding me!

The weird thing is I wasn't sure I wanted the role before they turned me down, but now, possibly because they've given me the lamest of excuses, I'm livid I didn't get it. I've been turned down for jobs before, but it's never left me feeling like this.

Oh, I'd like to think it's their loss, but hopefully I'm not quite that arrogant. I think the problem is I just can't understand it.