The Apprentice

As you may imagine, the above programme is of more than a passing interest to me. As a recruiter of outstanding employees and an admirer of entrepreneurial talents, I get plenty of bang for my buck watching an hourly episode each week.
 
The most notable feature of this series was how the ladies deservedly obliterated the guys in just about every department. In fact for the last surviving guy to come out with the immortal line “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with me, just perhaps mend a couple of spokes” the quality, or lack of it, in the male candidates was a little disappointing.
 
Although it’s easy to mock, the nerve of some of these individuals has to be respected. To continually come up with ideas and thrust them upon various strands of the community in a sales capacity, under the watchful glare of 24/7 cameras takes a hell of a lot of bottle. It’s this ingredient that I look for first and foremost in my own sales team and undoubtedly the quality I find hardest to uncover.
 
You see finding someone polite is easy. Finding someone with good manners, good customer service skills and good communication skills is reasonably easy and finding people who will work hard is rarely a problem. However, finding someone with the ‘x’ factor if you like, someone who will take an educated risk and not fear failure is a real challenge, especially if they must also have the qualities I’ve just listed. Most people need a couple of drinks inside them before adopting a nerveless attitude, so doing so because you want an edge over your rivals requires a high level of motivation, clear goals and guts! Among my team I have a few such fearless characters that I’d love to pit in an Apprentice contest to see how they fared. If it weren’t for the fact I wouldn’t want to lose them for a couple for weeks and could do without them getting overly excited about a £100k salary!!
 
The two ladies in the final were undoubtedly outstanding individuals and certainly the pick of the crop. They would definitely keep a few of us chaps very much on our toes.