More bitter than sweet in the boardroom - Chloe's blog week 3 - The Apprentice

Posted

Each week Chloe Harrold (Senior Employment Lawyer at Outset) writes a blog scrutinising the BBC’s The Apprentice series for The HR Director, pulling out the HR blunders for your entertainment and education.

Suck it and Sea

This week Lord Sugar set the candidates a very aptly themed task – the manufacture and selling of sweets. The Apprentice mogul got things rolling by mixing the teams up and deciding on the PMs himself: selecting Alana and Oliver given their foodie backgrounds. Surely we’re in for some stellar performances?

Or not. It seems manufacturing rock and fudge isn’t quite the same as making sausages – who knew. Oliver seems like ever such a nice chap, but as PM was laughable. His team were bossing him about, talking over him, making their own decisions about where to assign themselves – all before he could get a full sentence out. They had no strategy and even in the boardroom, on being questioned the second time around, Oliver still wasn’t able to confirm his team’s pricing. Mukai managed to sell their product for a lower price than originally agreed to the trade buyer, Aleksandra gave the wrong pricing (twice) and Paul couldn’t bring himself to associate himself with his embarrassment of a team long enough to try to sell anything.

Alana’s team on the other hand seemed to do relatively well (by cringe-fest Apprentice standards anyway). That was despite their rock pillow making machine breaking….