Watching the last five apprentices battle it out on Wednesday night, in what was a pretty gruelling affair, made me think just how powerful a recruitment tool it is to have someone like Alan Sugar at the head of a business.
He sits in a fairly small pool of celebrity-clad businessmen, but is having an inspirational leader at the top of an organisation a key to attracting the top talent?
While ‘top talent’, for me, is questionable on this year’s The Apprentice, Sugar certainly would have had his pick of the bunch.
Anyway, back to Wednesday night…
Talented individuals, those who stand out from the crowd at work and achieve ongoing business success, are those who are effective communicators, can sell themselves well whilst valuing the skills around them, and have a deep understanding of how to give and receive feedback.
Did anyone see these traits in the five apprentices on Wednesday night?
For my line of business, there was so much that to focus on – how each of the candidates focussed their thinking on how well they would do – from the start of the interviewing process Stella said “fully expect to get it” whilst Jamie spoke about a “very difficult day” – there is something here called self-fulfilling prophesy.
The candidates all lacked an understanding, once again, about how to effectively listen to what was being asked, and often launched into a defend mode of communication. It would have been more appropriate to use the challenges they were confronted with by taking a second to use the questions in the way they answered i.e. what do you mean when you say that…etc
One candidate referred to the exercise being ‘mental torture’ – this was of their own making since none of them were able to effectively communicate with the interviewers and appeared to be out to impress without calling on their selling skills that we have seen them use during the tasks.
Maybe I’m being overly-critical, or maybe I’m falling for some careful editing, but the level of intelligence and business-savvy seems to have dipped this year.
