The world is changing.

Tap a few buttons and Facebook knows those sweet potato fries you had for lunch were a little bit cheeky. Hold your breath and clench your buttocks and you might beat the queue for a ticket to a Wembley play-off final. Embrace social media, network with professionals regionally and nationwide, say the right thing and in the right way and you might even land yourself a job. The world has changed.

Shy bairns get nowt and all that.

A number of people have asked how I came to be a trainee at Macks Solicitors. After all, it’s notoriously difficult to obtain a training contract in what is today an ever-changing and constantly uncertain legal market.

I live in Sunderland; I went to school in Washington; I studied law in York; and I completed my practicing exams in Newcastle. It’s almost fitting then that I should complete my northern haul by now working for Macks in Teesside and Darlington.

And it started with a tweet.

Lest we forget it, Twitter can be a dark and dangerous place. Cast your mind back to headlines ruining the careers of the young and ambitious before they even began, and all because of a long-forgotten tweet from their teenage years about something un-PC.

The element of danger on Twitter is also true when football is being played –perhaps even more so. Overwhelming tactical know-how overspills onto the keyboards of many a football fan, whether their team win, lose or draw. And in all honesty, I am no different. I review my team in the same way as the thousands on Twitter. I show my support when the wave of unstoppable victories seems never-ending, I voice my Football Manager expertise when the wrongly selected team can only manage a draw and I rue another weekend ruined when the team don’t show up and we fall back to earth with a dismal defeat.

My team? Middlesbrough FC.

It’s through publicly reviewing Aitor Karanka’s Middlesbrough during their 2014/15 first-real-attempt-at-promotion-campaign-since-relegation that I came to be following Anthony McCarthy (@paulistapark) on Twitter. Not only did I appreciate and respect his ingenious Twitter handle, a subtle allusion to the famed Little Fella, but he would also regularly contribute to the #Boro140.

For those not in the know, a tweet is limited to 140 characters and the #Boro140 is a snippet review of each Middlesbrough performance, whatever the result. It affords an opportunity for the typical Boro fan to share their insight into Boro’s most recent exploits.

Anthony Vickers (@untypicalboro) coined the #Boro140 hashtag to allow Boro fans far and wide to share their viewpoints and a selection of the most puntastic tweets still often find their way into the sports section of the Gazette in Teesside.

Twitter is all about gaining followers, the simple thrill of a “retweet” and the lesser success indicated by a “favourite”. It’is safe to say that both the #Boro140, and Twitter generally, offer a competitive opportunity for those so inclined. Now believe me when I say I am well known for my competitive spirit – and by more people than you are.

And so to the competition. Humour is the most successful means of winning Twitter, of taking over the internet and of enjoying that potentially perilous 15 minutes of viral fame. The world is such that you can only hope your 15 minutes stems from something you are proud of. This is preferable to it being celebrated for that embarrassing photo considered to have so much meme value that it makes its way onto a public forum, ending up in the email inboxes of office-based workers around the country with the subject title, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!” Please note: this has not happened to me.

But back to @paulistapark, because Paulista Park became the competition. Anthony would produce his #Boro140 each week with imagination, pun or innuendo at a level at which no one else was operating. His aim was to be topical, to be funny, and to win.

And so it was that I started to compete. I would try to be more topical, at least four times funnier, and to win. A win would be indicated by the most retweets and favourites received per tweet. And so it was through regularly following the #Boro140 that I happened to be weighing up my competition one week when I clicked on @paulistapark’s Twitter profile.

At the click of a button I had a front-room armchair view into a complete stranger’s life, such is the world today. Through this brief glance into @paulistapark territory I could see it was the alter ego of Anthony McCarthy, a director solicitor at Macks in Middlesbrough.

A humble student approaching the end of his studies and the inevitable lengthy job application process cannot afford to ignore opportunities like this – you’ll remember that shy bairns get nowt. So I sent a private message to Paulista Park in the hope that there might be a job available working alongside my #Boro140 competition.

Dear Anthony, hope you don’t mind the message. I will soon complete my Legal Practice Course and wondered whether there are any employment opportunities available at Macks Solicitors?

Kind regards

Matthew

PS Up the Boro!

The inevitable reply followed that unfortunately there were no work opportunities at the present time. However, I was welcomed to forward a copy of my CV to the Paulista Park work email address, and I did so promptly. I’m also convinced that Anthony echoed my sentiments of “Up the Boro!”

My CV was predictably destined to sit with the administrative tasks and nonessential updates, on the back burner in an office I would never visit. I thought nothing of it and readied myself for the stressful job application process over the next few months. And then my phone rang.

I was invited for an interview the following week with “Boss Man” Nick Mack, the managing director. And I love a competition.

I prepared for the interview like no other. I readied my footballing small talk, my hopes and aspirations for another arduous season, my comments about Patrick Bamford’s hair. I practiced my responses to interview questions and applied these to my own experiences and qualifications, making sure to filter out any potentially embarrassing ones. I ensured I was up to date on current affairs, made sure I had an opinion on proposed changes to government legislation and hoped that nothing would faze me. I polished the plastic cover of my undergraduate dissertation and printed a spare copy for Boss Man. I also gave a small amount of consideration to the “this tennis ball is a bomb” question and had decided that I would make it a football and do a couple of keepy-ups and boot it through the window with a John Smiths’ no-nonsense nonchalance…okay, I didn’t think about this, but I had thought of everything else.

The interview went well and I was offered a part-time position as a paralegal and started work in the personal injury department on January 22 2015. My aim? To impress.

I worked hard, making sure I was always early to work, and despite once turning up in white plimsolls – having accidentally left my smart shoes at the front door – I made sure I looked presentable and professional every day. And it was noticed, the hard work paid off.

I was offered a training contract (a “period of recognised training”) and now work full time as a trainee solicitor in the family law department in Macks’ Darlington office.

Shy bairns get nowt after all.

And it started with a tweet.