The Archive

I’m fired!

So, I did the Apprentice interview on Saturday.

Interesting morning though. Horrible, but interesting.

I showed up to the hotel where the thing was taking place and we were all told to take a seat after the obligatory paperwork.

It was at this early stage that I was a bit different to everyone else doing this. I had decided that this was not really an interview, so I’d be well advised to wear something that showed a bit of my personality.

So I donned a flowery shirt and jeans for the day. This would prove to be either an act of inspired genius or pure folly when I got into the large room of candidates to find myself awash in a sea of suits. Not just suits, grey suits. Not just grey suits, charcoal suits.

I hadn’t realised there was a uniform. So there I was, a lone poppy in a field of grey grass.

I began to have misgivings.

So first up a group of ten of us were herded into a small room in front of a desk with two ‘senior producers’ behind it.

We were lined up behind numbers on the floor. Like The Usual Suspects, but with everyone looking exactly the same, except me, glaringly different, in the middle.

“You have thirty seconds to tell us why you should be the next apprentice,” they said.

“Hmm, I really should have given this some thought,” I realised.

Fortunately, I had a full 30 seconds to think of something as I was the second person called forth.

“I er, well, I should be the apprentice because I’ve got ideas,” I babbled, sounding like a very nervous moron.

This was not going as I’d envisioned.

Then everyone else stepped forth and explained that they were serial entrepeneurs, sales millionaires, in one memorable case ‘can sell things to people who don’t want them’ (I thought to myself, ‘why not just make things that people want?’ but then I’d already sounded like a right muppet, so who am I to criticise?).

Anyway, at the end of this, eight of the ten of us were asked to step forward, including me.

‘That’s it’ I thought to myself, ‘we’re all out’. After all, it seemed silly to just reject 2 out of ten. Whittling the group that slowly would take all day surely.

But no, we were all through, and herded like charcoal sheep (and one black one) into the next room to wait some more.

Next up we were gathered and taken upstairs, where we were asked to… wait. Yes, the theme of the morning wasn’t so much ‘auditioning’ as ‘waiting around’. Fortunately, I’d brought a book to read, which was lucky as we weren’t allowed to talk to each other whilst waiting either.

Anyway, eventually I get called into a room for an interview across a desk with a very nice lady.

She asked me a few questions about my application and why I wanted to be the Apprentice. I gave a set of fairly honest answers and we seemed to get on quite well.

I even managed to get her as a lead to sell some promotional merchandise, so you never know, we might at least get a new customer out of it.

It was somewhere near the end of our chat that she declared “Life is just a big game to you isn’t it?”

Fair observation but, um, The Apprentice is technically a game show itself, is it not?

It was rapidly coming home to me that everyone else was taking this far more seriously than me.

Still, I seemed to get through this stage too and was sent to another corridor for a nice wait.

Eventually (about 10 pages later) I got called into another room for another chat with another nice lady.

I think she suspected I wasn’t taking this seriously too. But the thing was, I was. I actually would like to win the Apprentice. I want to do the challenges and I want to prove that you don’t have to be a backstabbing charcoal suit to be effective in business.

On the other hand, I was really not enjoying the process so far. Too much time spent with over-friendly sales types (you know the ones, they can’t say ‘hello’ without touching you on the shoulder and agreeing with everything you say) and too much talking without action. I thought there would be some sort of exercise or activity to do.

So I told the nice lady that I was having serious misgivings about the process so far. I think this may have been a smart move on my part, because it then looked more like I was considering the whole experience rather than just showing up for a laugh.

I though things were going well when she asked ‘but would you wear a suit if we asked you back?’.

But then, at the end of our chat she said goodbye in the one that was more ‘adieu’ than ‘au revoir’ and I was sent home.

Apparently I will find out next Friday if I’m through. Seeing as some people went on to a further stage after the one I went through, I’m going to go ahead and assume no call with be forthcoming.

But I will keep you posted, of course.

So what have I learned?

1. You cannot use the word ‘proactive’ without sounding like a twat.

That’s it actually. That’s all I learned.

PS apologies to all who have already listened to versions of this story over the weekend. Mads is quite right, my conversations are merely opportunities to draft blog entries.

posted by Peter The Great @ 9:09 AM