Having been involved in many recruitment sessions over the past three and a half years, I have seen some pretty colorful backgrounds from prospective applicants into the International Management Trainee program. The more I see, the more I reflect on my own background “Pre-Meltwater”.

I did not have a typical university life. In fact, it is probably safe to say that my university life was fairly unique.

I played on a professional sports team, competing in tournaments in Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Marseille and many other warm and sunny locations around the world.

There are plenty of people at university who lead that kind of life, however, so why was mine so unique? Well, I was not playing basketball, lacrosse, baseball or football, my sport was professional paintball. Yes, such a sport does exist.

I traveled around the world with seven other guys and in front of crowds, sometimes in the thousands, shot people with paintballs. For anyone that has not been paintballing, it is one of the biggest adrenaline rushes you can experience. Few things are as exciting as someone literally trying to shoot you whilst you run, dive and do your best to shoot them first. Add in TV cameras from ESPN, Eurosport and other networks and a few thousand screaming fans, and the pressure is on.

Aiming at my Target in a Paintball Tournament

That same pressure was something that I felt the moment that I walked in to the Meltwater interview session in London at the start of 2006; I knew that whilst there were no guns pointed at me, the experience was going to be every bit as tough as anything I had experienced on the paintball field.

As the interview progressed, the more I saw, the more I wanted to work for the company. The energy of the Meltwater team was infectious; the way they interacted with each other was very similar to the team spirit that I had been used to, albeit, without the mischievous pranks that had so frequently typified the paintball trips.

I am a pretty self confident person, but I knew that one of the biggest challenges that I would face was that playing professional paintball did not exactly seem like an ideal starting point for a business career with international potential. My interview strategy of trying to show confidence probably came across as arrogance, and as a result I was asked the kind of tough soul-searching questions that you hope you do not get in an interview setting. For the life of me I could not think of suitable answers to the majority of those questions. I was young and naïve, and it seemed that I was out of my depth.

I had always enjoyed the travelling aspect of paintball – new places, new experiences, and new stories to tell. At Meltwater I had heard tales of people working in London then travelling off to the US and Asia to launch new offices. From day one I set my sights on following in those footsteps and moving to the US. In retrospect, it was one of the smartest goals that I ever set for myself.

Looking back, although I didn’t know it at the time, the whole interview experience gave me great insight into what I could expect from a career at Meltwater. If you had told me back then that I would have experienced the things that I have in the last three and a half years, I would probably have laughed at you. I have been challenged in ways that I did not even think possible, and know that I will be challenged in the coming years in a way that will show me aspects of my character that I have not yet touched on.

So whilst nobody shoots at me anymore, and there is a lot less testosterone in the Meltwater team, I feel that my paintball years taught me things about teamwork, the importance of drive, determination, setting your sights high and fighting for a goal that transfers well into a business arena. It has also taught me that, regardless of someone’s history, the biggest contributors to a team can come from the most unlikely of backgrounds. I couldn’t really ask for much more.

On Reconnaissance with my Paintball Team