KUALA LUMPUR: Former CIMB Group Holdings Bhd chairman Tan Sri Nazir Razak shared his rough start at the company, sharing the rejections he faced that ended up shaping his career.
Nazir, who is the second prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein's youngest son, said he chose CIMB after considering its workplace environment that he found suitable.
"I chose CIMB because I thought it was a very can-do challenger organisation. And that suited me at that time.
"And I found this guy who I wanted to be my boss, Steve Wong. So, I wanted to work for this guy because he had built a reputation as the top corporate financier in town," he said in The Game of Impossible podcast, today.
However, his initial application to the bank was met with doubt, as CIMB's management believed he might not be able to handle the demands of corporate finance.
"He was a tough nut to crack. Firstly, when I applied for the job, his boss, a chap by the name of Robert Cheim, was the one who interviewed me and rejected me.
"Being the son of a prominent figure, they assumed I wouldn't manage the gruelling hours required."
After appealing directly to Wong, Nazir was finally given a chance, but he was treated no differently than his more experienced peers.
"I was the first non-accountant and a fresh graduate at CIMB. So, they had no kind of training programme or whatever.
"They treated me just like a seasoned accountant when I joined. I didn't know debits and credits, so it was tough.
"And the first piece of work I did was such a poor product that my boss took it and whacked me on the head with it," he said.
While such an action would be unacceptable today, Nazir admitted that it had a lasting impact.
"I walked out of his office that day and swore to myself that it would never happen again. And so I worked very hard. But I can tell you today that I could not keep up with a lot of my colleagues.
"I couldn't. They were working even longer hours than me. They were working maybe 18 hours a day. I was working 14 hours a day."
Therefore, to stand out among the others, he focused on his strengths.
"I had to find my comparative advantage. They were great with numbers, so I concentrated on writing, marketing and articulating ideas."
"So, you know, I guess the moral of the story then is to find your niche. That was the kind of a beginning," he said.