It isn't often that one stumbles across an old advertisement from more than fifty years ago, and even less often that one stumbles across an old advertisement that was as life-changing as this BECHTEL-WKE advertisement which appeared in Papua New Guinea's POST-COURIER newspaper sometime in December 1970.
Being a young man about to qualify and looking for a senior accounting position offering responsibility, scope for advancement and a wide range of experience, I had replied to exactly the same advertisement which had appeared in exactly the same newspaper three months earlier.
By the time this December advertisement appeared, I was already fully settled in my new position of Senior Auditor, playing cat-and-mouse with dozens of contractors who tried to get their often inflated progress billings past my scrutiny. Signing off on billings which in the aggregate amounted to many millions of dollars was a big responsibility which I took seriously. Unfortunately, being good at it also left me stuck with it, but the wide range of experience and the level of confidence it gave me also offered me plenty of scope for advancement in later employment.
I have heard it from others that the experience gained on the gigantic Bougainville Copper Project (which was at the time the world's biggest construction project in one of the world's most challenging locations) set them up for the rest of their working life. I certainly moved on to bigger and even more challenging jobs in half a dozen other countries.
It pays to advertise - and it also pays to read those advertisements.
