HR Insights 

 

 

For years, I resisted watching the Apprentice on television, giving friends and colleagues numerous excuses as to why I didn’t watch it... It was on the wrong channel; it was shown at the wrong time; it clashed with another programme, I had a life etc. etc. But I guess the real reason was that I was perhaps a HR purist (or puritan) – or frankly a HR snob and the concept of Alan Sugar’s idea of a recruitment campaign didn’t quite sit comfortably with me... 

 

So what happened to make me change my views?? Well quite simply, I had family staying with me one weekend and whilst I was waiting for them to finish in the bathroom and go to bed, I happened to flick the TV channel and found the repeat showing late one night and I started to watch... and just like that, I was sucked into the concept of the programme... The episode I started watching was in the latter stages of the last series when a job was the prize on offer and I was drawn into the dynamics of the contestants. Perhaps a little naively, I couldn’t quite believe how two-faced they were; giving Alan Sugar such positive feedback of their Project Manager to sickening degrees as they walked into Board Room and then going for the jugular of that same person once it had been revealed that their team had lost the task... Not that I feel sorry for the Project Manager, they were equally as bad as their team-mates, with very few of them ever accepting responsibility for the failure of the task – which as a Project Manager myself, I see as part and parcel of the role – when things go well, we accept the praise and when things go less well, we accept the responsibility for that... 

 

It also struck me, as I watched that first (and subsequent) series, how incredibly ‘brave’ or ‘stupid’ the contestants were... I mean, how many of you would actually employ some of the contestants from that show?? Surely it has to be a seriously career limiting move to go onto national television and to perform less than well on the tasks and then try to sell yourself in an interview as a competent Project Manager, Salesperson, Business Manager etc. when you have already shown the viewing public just how incompetent (and daft) you actually are (remember the guy who thought the Dry Cleaners called ‘Top Hat Dry Cleaners’ would actually sell Top Hats???!!?!?). I love that they try to bat their bad performance down to the editing; but at the end of the day, they can’t argue with the fact that, if there is tape of them doing/saying daft/stupid things, then the only way it could have been recorded is for it to have happened in the first place... Yet again, my naivety shines through – of course I should have known that as with all of these reality shows, it’s not just the prospect of the prize itself that is the big attraction, it’s the ’15-minutes’ of fame and all that that brings which is the biggest attraction... 

 

As I sit preparing to watch this year’s final, I’m wondering who is going to ‘shine’ through and enter into a business partnership with Alan Sugar... Will any of the four remaining contestants show the same degree of genius that was shown by Tom – last year’s winner; saving that story of how he got in front of the Product Buyer for Walmart to the moment when it was down to him and the other finalist awaiting the final decision, rather than flogging it to death every time he appeared in the last three in the Board Room (as others had done before him...), was pure genius... And, more importantly, will any of the finalists have actually spent time preparing a thorough and researched business case before they get sat in front of the interviewers (and my view of the interviewing techniques will be saved for another day)... 

 

So, like Marmite - love it or hate it, I’ll leave you to decide, but for me, Wednesday evening viewing will just not be the same without my fix of the Apprentice...