For weeks the email inboxes of the Personnel Today team have been bombarded by press releases from all manner of companies jumping aboard The Apprentice bandwagon.
Now ahead of the show's final episode tonight, that bombardment has reached unprecedented levels with firms eager to dispense advice on interview techniques, employment law, pyschometric testing, body language, CV-writing... the list goes on.
Perhaps the naffest example of this publicity seeking comes from Essex County Council.
The council has said it would consider offering the runner-up in tonight's final a job "to help the authority continue its drive to deliver excellent quality services".
Council leader Lord Hanningfield said he wanted the "best and the brightest" to come and work for the organisation. He obviously hasn't been watching the show. The remaining contestants have spent most of the last two months lying, back-stabbing, lurching from one balls-up to the next and desperately trying to save their own backsides.
Actually, perhaps they might be suited to a career in local government.
The move has been attacked - quite correctly - as a publicity stunt. Note the council's use of the word consider. No cast iron offer, and a convenient get-out clause for the brainiacs in Essex's PR department, just in case the bloke who does the pterodactyl impression wins.
