Today’s blog has been written jointly with Ben Moss, the Managing Director of my University Spin-off company, Robertson Cooper – he’s been following the Apprentice closely this year…
So Alan Sugar’s ‘Apprentice’ was finally chosen last night – and congratulations to Stella English, she really has earned her new job over the last few months in front of an audience of millions. Last week we saw the episode where the final five candidates were interviewed by Lord Sugar’s associates. As a piece of television entertainment it was immensely enjoyable, but it also raised a number of concerns. Before I explain what I mean, I want to say that I realise The Apprentice is a TV show with a remit to entertain its audience and that it can never fully represent real life….
But the problem is that the candidates are all real people going for a real ‘six figure salary’ job with Sir Alan. They will inevitably be emotionally and physically affected by the selection process and, of course, its outcome. In that sense it’s important that the whole thing feels fair and they are all treated with respect throughout – and that’s where the concern lies.
I was struck (as were the candidates) by the general aggression of the interviewers in last week’s show. It seemed like the whole purpose of the exercise was to catch the candidates out through a combination of intimidation and an over-the-top forensic examination of CVs. It was as if all the weeks of good performance in task after task could be swept aside because someone had chosen to emphasise the wrong thing or used certain words to describe an achievement on a resume. To me it felt like a lazy approach to interviewing and I thought that the way that Stuart Baggs’ integrity ended up being questioned because of a semantic difference of opinion and his subsequent ‘firing’ was extremely unfair.
A number of the candidates clearly felt that one of the interviewers had a particularly bullying style – you could say that he came straight out of the 1980s. He seemed determined to put the candidates on the back foot before he would talk to them and didn’t seem to be giving them a chance to answer the questions. The point that the producers and the employer are missing here is that recruitment is a two-way process – it’s not about ‘grilling’ or interrogating candidates to get the truth out of them; it’s about creating a mature conversation between two parties to try to find whether there is a fit for a particular role (the actual role on offer has hardly ever been mentioned – was it a sales, project management, product development, marketing job?) Of course, during any interview the candidate should be challenged to show his / her best, but the employer’s representative – the interviewer – cannot act with impunity.
And that’s the key point – all of Lord Sugar’s associates are essentially representing his business and his employer brand. They are giving the candidates an insight into the kind of culture they’d be joining and the kinds of people they’d be working with if they accepted a job offer. I have to say that if I had been on the end of some of the treatment dished out in those interviews I’d have rejected any job offer that came my way out of hand. I wouldn’t want to work in a culture where that kind of behaviour was acceptable among leaders and could therefore be copied by staff. The finalists are undoubtedly talented people and they would have no problem getting well paid jobs elsewhere. Employers have to understand that the best people have a choice about where they take their unique bundle of skills, ability, motivation and personality – in short, you have to sell the job to your candidates no matter who you are.
Such outmoded approaches to interviewing potentially set a dangerous example for recruiters. Most big businesses have moved beyond this way of selecting staff, but there is a real risk that SMEs or less experienced managers out there could watch this programme and think that this is the right way to conduct interviews. Next year it’s time to find a different way of including an interview stage: personally, I’d set it up like an assessment centre with exercises, interviews and psychometric personality assessments. For the interview element one of the interviewers could be a qualified business psychologist who would challenge the candidates in a legitimate way that could still be entertaining; another interviewer could be an entrepreneur who understands the recruitment process like, for example, James Caan from Dragon’s Den.
Ultimately, programmes like The Apprentice have a duty to set the example for business – in many ways it succeeds in promoting an entrepreneurial spirit, but in this case it’s come up short and it’s definitely a case of ‘could do better’.
Posted by Cary Cooper 
