The Apprentice Analysed

The Apprentice Analysed's long predicted winner, Yasmina Siadatan, was finally hired by Sir Alan Sugar last night, leaving our equally long predicted runner up, Kate Walsh, as the disappointed losing finalist.

The final task, to design and promote a new brand of chocolates, whilst closely contested, highlighted Yasmina's strengths and Kate's weaknesses and saw our league leader increase the gap over her rival.

Kate's strengths, on our Leadership Radar, was in the People arena. She is a good communicator, diplomatic and firm when she needs to be. However she is weaker in the Thought part of our model, lacking innovation and ingenuity. More critically though she lacks focus on the ultimate goal meaning that she can deviate from the task in hand.

On the other hand, Yasmina is always clear about what is to be achieved. Having established the objectives and the framework, she trusts the team members to do their individual tasks.

Yasmina was also the one who displayed the most potential: she listened to feedback, was self critical as well as being totally dedicated and driven. This was displayed again tonight when asked what her greatest achievement was. She chose her presentation on the final show as this was where she was stretched the most rather than choosing a moment of real triumph. She chose something that represented her greatest challenge rather than her greatest achievement.

There are rough edges to Yasmina's profile, most notably her brusqueness on occasion, but an apprenticeship is a learning process and an education leading to someone becoming highly skilled in their chosen profession and she has all the qualities to be a success.

From week 3 we identified Yasmina as the potential winner and and Kate as runner up and from week 5 we identified the top five. I mention this not as a source of satisfaction but some considerable relief too.

Professor Binna Kandola OBE
Senior Partner, Pearn Kandola

So, how did you get along with Bad Practice Bingo?

By way of a quick recap, earlier this week I presented you with a simple game; how many different types of bad interview practice could you spot in the penultimate episode of Sir Alan’s race to find his next apprentice.

As an avid watcher of the last few series, I was wholly unsurprised to see examples of bad interview practice being displayed very quickly. Granted, this is designed to be entertainment and is heavily edited to show the most dramatic moments. However, some of it is just plain ridiculous.

Of the twelve suggested examples of bad practice, the outright winner has to be “Candidate is Insulted or Degraded”. And of the interview panel, Claude Litner has to be crowned ‘Champion of the Put-Down’ – “it’s fair to say [your CV] is exceptional… exceptionally bad that is… it’s all gibberish!”

This was closely followed by asking questions with no relevance to the role and an almost complete lack of probing to get under the surface. This is a crying shame given the express purpose of this episode was to “break through the blagging and the bluster” and “find what is behind the polished exteriors”.

Surprisingly however I found it difficult to call “House!”. A classic example of poor interview practice is the use of hypothetical questions (“how would you lead a team?”, “how would you market the product?”, etc). Using such questions, it is very difficult to infer whether someone would actually do what they say they would. Thankfully, Sir Alan’s “trusted advisors” steered clear of this type of question.

Aside from this though, the process was once again a shining example of what not to do. In my last post, I mentioned that up to this point, The Apprentice has all the hallmarks of a good selection process (i.e. well-rounded, challenging and job relevant). It’s such a shame that he is let down by his interview panel in the final stages.

I have talked about what not to do; here’s a quick run down of what you should do:
• Build rapport with the candidate and put them at ease
• Focus on past behaviour as this is consistently shown to be the best predictor of future performance
• Use open questions to gather relevant job-specific examples
• Avoid hypothetical, leading and closed questions where appropriate
• Probe the candidate in order to dig under the surface
• Avoid subjective judgements and ensure objective ratings against job-relevant criteria
• And finally, do not at any point openly call them a “prat”!

Maybe I should put in a request to be one of Sir Alan’s “trusted advisors” next year. Might not make for such good telly but he would certainly feel more confident about his decisions.

Jon Atkins
Business Psychologist
Pearn Kandola

I always look forward to the penultimate round of interviews in the Apprentice.  I would like to be able to say it is because of the unique insights they offer into the candidates.  If I am being honest, though, it is because the interviewer’s tactics are often so crude that I find my jaw dropping in a style that even James would be proud of.

Tonight, one interviewer did not disappoint.  If you ask the question, “Which of the interviewers would you least like to be interviewed by?” the obvious answer would seem to be Claude Litner.

His overly aggressive, crass questioning style is typical of the trap that a lot of interviewers fall into when they are trying to test how candidates respond in stressful situations.

Even if this style was a good measure of remaining calm under fire, the problem remains that it is such a tired, old, predictable technique that candidates will simply put on their protective armour before they go into battle.  Result: answers give no real insight and as Litner himself admitted, he was left feeling that candidates were simply giving the answers he wanted to hear. 

The intelligent questioning and probing that was lacking in Litner’s approach was, however, consistently evident in Karen Brady’s interviews.  Her deft thinking allowed her to challenge Debra’s feeble explanation for why others might describe her as a bitch.

Whilst Litner described Kate’s answers as perfect, Brady’s subtler questioning resulted in Kate describing herself as the very thing that she finds hardest to deal with in the workplace – a whingey, moany woman. 

Which brings us to the candidates. As much as I have enjoyed James’ bizarre turns of phrase, I don’t think he can start getting offended at this stage by people suggesting he is a bit of a joker.

  Anyone who describes themselves as bringing ignorance to the table and as a wheel that needs a couple of spokes mending can hardy be surprised when others question his seriousness. Likening Sir Alan to Willy Wonka was the icing on the cake.

Fourth place: Lorraine.  The big turning point for Lorraine in this series, without a doubt, was when Margaret described her as the Cassandra of the group.  Her confidence grew and she started to push her “unique talent” of insight.

The problem remains, however, that while her insight may often be accurate, she still lacks the ability to persuade others.  Insight without persuasion is like a Porsche without fuel:  great to have, but going nowhere. 

Third place: Debra. There is no doubt that Debra has big potential. Huge. But would you have her in your team? Would you want to be managed by her?

People have suggested that her aggressive style is due to her relative inexperience, but I have known five-year olds with better insight into their impact on others and what they need to do about it. Magnanimous in defeat, she thanked the team for their feedback and said she would take it with her.  I am sure she will, but I suspect it will be as a badge of honour along with the references that describe her as obnoxious and someone who causes other people to put in complaints. 

We first commented on her inability to listen to feedback back in week 2.  She has since had nine weeks to change her style, plus more feedback on top.  If she was going to act on the feedback, those nine weeks were her best chance to do so.  

And so to the final. Kate and Yasmina have occupied the top two positions in our Apprentice league table all the way since Week 3 and they both deserve their place in Sunday’s challenge.

The fact that Kate thinks being described as a robot is a compliment probably says as much about romance today as it does about Kate; however this robotic persona is a problem for her.

Although one of the key characteristics of effective leaders is an ability to be calm under pressure, Kate takes this to the extreme and has shown little emotion throughout the series.  The problem is that people feel they don’t know the real her – and this means that deep down they don’t know if they can trust her.

Kate may well be a safe choice for delivering tough projects, but this doesn’t make her the right Apprentice.  Yasmina appears to be the obvious choice for Sir Alan’s next Apprentice…but since when has the obvious choice been the final choice?

Nic Sale
Head of Diversity
Pearn Kandola