Apprentice - interviews

[zico]

We start the episode with a bit of filler as each of the candidates unsurprisingly tell us that they’re here to win, they’d like to win and they will be Lord Sugar’s next business partner. After months of being Little Miss Frosty, Lottie chatters happily to the other candidates about how nervous she is, which is ignored. It’s a bit too late to start trying to make friends.

Business plans – Pamela, Carina and Scarlett want to expand their current businesses (beauty, bakery and recruitment), Lottie wants to start an elite club for rich countryside ladies, Lewis wants to set up a 21-35 travel company.

As usual, the interviews are set in a deserted London skyscraper. Interviewers are the familiar forensic fearsome foursome, Claude, Claudine, Mike, plus extra-scary Linda from Leeds. Pre-interviews there’s a bit of nervous camaraderie between Carina, Scarlett and Pamela, while Lottie babbles on merrily to herself while Lewis lounges around nonchalantly with the supreme confidence of a man who surely must have a brilliant business plan and no need to worry. When Lottie sets off for her first interview, Carina says “She loves an argument, she can dish it out, but can she take it?” I think she’d like to be a fly on the wall for Lottie’s interviews.

Pamela tells Linda she’s an inventor of beauty products, so Linda takes one of Pamela’s inventions and pulls out 78 identical products already on the market. Pamela has developed 2 beauty products but both were banned by the H&S meanies at the EU presumably for causing minor side-effects such as headaches, fever, coma and death. We have a bit of panto – “You’re not really an inventor, are you?” “I am”. “You’re not”. “I am”. “Oh no, you’re not” etc. Afterwards Pamela expresses her surprise that Linda didn’t believe her, and says “I was trying to make lots of eye contact to convince her I was really an inventor”. Seems Linda prefers facts and evidence to flirtiness.

Mick is leading Scarlett into a trap with questions about her speciality – recruitment and interviewing – by asking should people lie when trying to get jobs. Scarlett confirms that lying is bad, given Mike his opening to pull out her Linkedin claim about having an Open University degree. "Is that true?" "Well, it sort of was when I put it on because I was studying". "But is it true?". "Errrr, no".

Claude tells Carina she’s only got a little family business and says she needs to be realistic about her expansion plans, and also mentions that her plans don’t show how she’d use Lord Sugar’s £250k. Claudine asks Carina about her family which gets her all emotional.

Next is Lewis v Linda in the most one-sided contest ever. Lewis’s business “plan” is to set up Club 21-35 holidays and take them for a week in Croatia. Linda asks what experience he’s had as a tour operator, and he cheerfully replies “none”, but when she repeats it back to him he says “That’s not what I said”. It was. He then tries arguing that being a holiday rep is “sort of” the same as being a travel operator, but Linda definitely isn’t having any of it. He also says it isn't a safe investment, so Linda stops the interview there and then.

Mike sets another of his little traps asking Pamela about her delivery times (3-5 days) before saying he ordered something 11 days ago from her company and hasn’t received it. He gives her the order number, says “can you remember all that” and she says “No, but I will” (what?) before he lends her a pen to write it on her hand.

Lottie is explaining her plans to allow elite countryside ladies to join Lottie’s elite club for a purely nominal joining fee of £600 which will then enable them to pay Lottie even more to go hunting’n’shooting, fishing, tennis, horse-riding and gossiping about ladies who aren’t in the club. Mike asks why her business plan doesn’t mention costs at all, and Lottie says she forgot, but she has the costs in her head. Mike thinks that’s a lame “dog ate my homework” excuse and asks if she’s actually a serious candidate.
Claude tells Lottie she’s a remarkable young woman, but that’s the nicest thing he’s going to say to her today. It’s not even a compliment, so this could go badly. It does.

Claude starts nicely with Lewis, telling him he’s done well in the tasks and he had high hopes, before settling down to business and saying his business plan is garbage and his numbers don’t even add up. Apparently he’s going to spend £350k of Lord Sugar’s £250k. His “plan” is to spend in advance on hotels and flights, then hope to get 200 punters in, which Claude describes as a “s@@t or bust” plan. Lewis is puzzled by this negativity, because it’s not his money, it’s Lord Sugar’s, so if he loses it all, no harm done, and if it works he keeps lots of lovely money. It’s really a more complicated version of sticking £250k on red or black at a roulette wheel, but with the crucial difference that the odds of making a profit with Lewis are way lower than 50/50.

Mike asks Lottie a simple question “How many events will you run a year?”. Lottie says it’s seasonal. Mike tells her it’s a simple question, she says things vary from month to month, sometimes more, sometimes less. Just gimme a number, dammit. She finally cracks and says 20, to which he replies she’d need at least 96 events a year. She plans to run her business on her own, and seems unfazed by having to work over 4 times as hard as she’d originally thought.

Claude is heaping praise on Scarlett for her performances in the tasks, then turns to her business plan, describing it as “at best, woeful”. He tells her she can’t yet get the CEO-level jobs she’s talking about, because she's operating at a level below that. Scarlett points to her great reputation, and Claude says "You don't have a reputation, the firm you worked for has a reputation". He's not happy about the written plan, saying the lack of profit and loss figures is deplorable, saying “you must know them, why didn’t you put them in”. She tries the weasel-words “sorry you feel that way” but he jumps in saying she should be sorry about it, not him, because she’s messed it up, and she should have done better with her business plan because she has the figures but didn’t do it properly. Poor Scarlett’s confidence is hugely knocked by this battering from Claude and she’s upset afterwards, remarking wryly “fun times with Claude”.

Mike is asking Carina how many shops she eventually plans to have. Massive. What’s the number? Really massive. How many? A lot. How many? Oh, oodles. A number? We can see Carina trying to make up numbers on the spot and she eventually comes up with 2,000-5,000. Mike tells her this is totally unrealistic. It’s almost as if she doesn’t do numbers and just made something up on the spot. He asks her about her claim that every customer in their café is asked for feedback, which she confirms, before he says nobody asked him for feedback when we visited the café. Really? Yes. Really, really? Still yes. I can’t believe it – really? Despite the repeated questioning of his take on events, Mike is sticking to his story that nobody asked him. Anyway, Carina asks him and he says their coffee was quite nice.

Linda Leeds v Lottie Lion. They are both wearing bright red outfits, but there the similarity definitely ends. Lottie talks about her elite invitation-only club for the right sort of people and Linda wonders whether in Lottie’s view Linda speaks the Queen’s English. “Well, of course not, you unspeakable rough Northern oik” is what Lottie just about manages to avoid saying, and she temporises saying Linda has very good English. But not the Queen’s English? Lottie repeats “very good English”. Linda talks about her very humble background from Leeds while Lottie tries to avoid talk of “riff-raff”, “not our sort” and “lowering the tone”. Linda tells Lottie she has a good idea and there’s money in it, but Lottie isn’t the sort of person you’d want to have running it. Lottie goes away to write a note to self “Definitely no Northerners in my club”.

Mike is making mincemeat of Lewis, but happily for Lewis he’s blissfully unaware of it. Have you ever been to Croatia? No. Why pick it then? Dunno really, gotta pick somewhere, Croatia’s as good as anywhere. Mike pulls a very sneaky trick in Lewis’s opinion by producing a globe, asking Lewis to point out Croatia. Lewis explains that people use Google to find countries and complains this big round thing surely bears no resemblance to the real world. He points at Greece, then when Mike tells him he’s a thousand miles out, says “The point is, I’ve never seen a globe”. No Lewis, the point is you literally don’t know where you’re going. Although admitting to never having seen a globe is also enlightening in its own way.

When interviewed by Claude, Pamela gets tearful and Claude asks her why she’s crying (apparently because she really really wants to do well) before saying “so anyway, it’s got nothing to do with my questions, let’s get on with the interview”.

Claudia seems fairly gentle with Scarlett, asking her about her biggest mistakes, which were leaving home early and getting pregnant as a teenager. Afterwards Scarlett tells the others she now feels like a real idiot and weak, which is not what she’s really like.

Lord Sugar has fun in the boardroom with his interviewers, asking Linda and Claudia if they’d be selected by Lottie for her elite club. Not a chance, they chorus. He asks what about Karen, she’s a Baroness and runs West Ham football club and they just laugh and say no chance either. Carina's wild guess of 2,000-5,000 shops is deried, with Lord Sugar joking it would have to be at least 10,000 shops for him to be interested.
Lottie is quizzed about her business plan, and defends it by saying it would seem bizarre to non-countryside folk, but Claude swiftly corrects her, saying no - it’s a bizarre business plan to put to a potential investor.

Lottie is quickly sent packing, then attention turns to Lewis. His plan is to enter a business area he’s never done before and has no expertise in, to go somewhere he’s never visited and to spend £100k more than Lord Sugar’s prize. The only person impressed by this plan is Lewis. Surprise, surprise, he’s fired as well. Lord Sugar is torn between the final 3, but eventually decides that Pamela only has 2 new products to market, and it’s too risky, so Carina and Scarlett are in the final. They are probably the best of this year's crop, both in talent and likeability.

[terminal7]

Year after year many of the 'final' candidates fail to submit even the most basic of business plans. I assume they are incapable of assembling a rudimentary projected cash flow statement, a 1/3/5 year P&L etc. In effect the likes of Lottie and Lewis are purely there for the craic.

Not sure whether it is my dimming memory, but the quality of candidates appears to have deteriorated over the years. No I am not talking about the General Election - where this is undoubtedly the case.

T7

[zico]

Not sure whether it is my dimming memory, but the quality of candidates appears to have deteriorated over the years. No I am not talking about the General Election - where this is undoubtedly the case.

T7

In the first couple of years, there were genuine young business contenders around, but since then it's become more of a reality show. However, I think both this year's finalists are pretty good.
Speaking of the General Election, would have loved to see the party leaders being interviewed on TV by Claude, Claudine, Mike and Linda! Nicola Sturgeon is the only leader who might have held her own, the rest would have been in big trouble.