Almost there.

The call

It was the evening of a weekday, spring of 2019. I was at home, waiting. Sakhalin runs eight hours ahead of Moscow, so their morning is my evening, and I had been vividly awaiting this call for days. I wanted it to happen as soon as possible. When the phone rang, it was a McKinsey senior partner, the calmest of the three I'd sat with in Moscow, calling me himself.

He was warm about it. He said he had genuinely enjoyed our conversation, and so had the rest of his team, that they'd talked through all the candidates they'd interviewed over this period, and this was their decision. Then the sentence I can still feel: "Unfortunately, at this moment we can't extend you an offer. But we'd encourage you to apply again in a year. It's normal to apply more than once."

My face went hot while he was still speaking. I said something gracious. I don't remember what. Because by the time that call came, I had already moved to McKinsey in my head. I never actually did. And the feeling of it falling through landed like a stab in the back.

The door I opened myself

Rewind a few months. I was on Sakhalin, an island most people can't place on a map, doing engineering for Fluor on ExxonMobil projects. A good opportunity in its own right. McKinsey wasn't something that landed in my lap. I came across the possibility, reached out to someone directly, a person who is still in my LinkedIn contacts today, and we started talking. He suggested I formally apply.

So I did, and not lightly. I went deep. I worked through the kind of case studies I knew I'd face in the interviews. And for the first time in my life, I hired a career consultant, someone to help me sharpen my CV and cover letter. It worked. They called me back.

The first stage was a surprise. I'd braced for the brutal problem-solving test McKinsey was famous for. But my CV had caught their interest, and instead they offered me an alternative: a real interview with a partner in Italy. I took it without hesitating. I'd always rather talk to a person than hand my fate to a test.

She was warm, and her questions felt almost random to me at the time. Looking back, she was reading how I think and how I lead, not my answers. Whatever she saw, it was enough. I got invited to Moscow for a full round with engagement managers and partners.

That round did not feel good. Three conversations, and I walked out of at least two of them certain I'd fumbled. On the flight back to Sakhalin I was already rehearsing the disappointment, bracing for the polite no.

"I got this"

Then a call came from one of the people who'd interviewed me. I picked up already half-resigned, ready to hear the no and move on. But what I heard was different. They wanted me back for the final round, senior partners, in person. That one call changed everything about how I saw my chances. It's also where the whole unfortunate spiral began.

Here is the exact moment the thing turned, and it wasn't the one I'd have guessed. It wasn't an interview. It was that call, being invited back after a round I was sure I'd blown. A quiet voice in me said, I got this. If they still want me after that, it's basically done.

And that voice, more than any interview, is what cost me. Because the day I decided it was basically done, I stopped. Not with any announcement. I quietly closed my current job in my head. Stopped looking at other options. Stopped keeping anything warm. In my head I was already in Moscow, already in the new life. I was just waiting for the paperwork to catch up.

The final round came. Senior partners, in person, three of them. I know I failed to deliver the case with one or two. One of them asked me to describe the hardest situation I'd faced and how I got through it. I told him about a hundred-million-euro project where I'd assembled a team across four different continents, people who had never worked together, and we'd delivered under budget and on schedule, which secured the company a second project of the same size.

I thought it was an obvious win. He didn't. What I could see clearly, that we were badly resource-constrained at the time, dozens of projects running, the head office and satellite offices all stretched thin, so pulling twenty capable people together was genuinely hard, I never actually said out loud. To him we were a large international brand. Staffing twenty people should be trivial. I'd left out the one piece of context that made the whole story mean anything, because to me it was so obvious it didn't need saying.

Then the evening at home. The calm partner. Apply again in a year.

What "almost" does to you

For a while I told myself the lesson was about the case, about explaining my context better. That's a real lesson, and I still carry it. But it's not the one that mattered most.

The one that mattered is what "almost there" does to you while you wait. Being close is the most dangerous place you can stand, and not because of the odds. It's because hope quietly rewrites itself as certainty, and certainty makes you stop doing the exact things that would catch you if you're wrong. I didn't lose the McKinsey offer and then stop searching. I stopped searching the day I let myself believe I had it, weeks before anyone told me anything.

So when the house came down, there was nothing underneath it. I went back to the job I'd already left in my head. I didn't have the stamina to start another search, and I've always been particular, I wasn't going to move just to move. I sat in that for a while.

It did turn out fine in the end. Not long after, an opportunity came to go to the US for a year, and I took it. I got lucky that a floor appeared. But it appeared despite my choices, not because of them.

This week

If you're in the middle of something right now, an interview process, a possible move, a maybe that feels like it's tilting toward yes, ask yourself one honest question: what have I already stopped doing because I've decided this is basically done?

The applications you let go cold. The conversation you didn't follow up on. The option you told yourself you no longer need. Pick one, this week, and keep it alive. Not because you don't believe the good thing will happen. Because momentum is the only part of this that's still in your hands, and you don't put it down until the offer is signed. Ideally not until you've actually started the new role.

Until next Saturday, Vitalii

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