Anyone who saw last night’s Apprentice would have been on the edge of their seats as “Surrallen” showed Lucinda the door and turned his attention to the remaining four candidates. We had been told there’d be three evictions, leaving two for the final. But in a fabulous twist, the big man decided to keep all four and have them all battle it out in next week’s final showdown.
Yesterday’s episode left me a little uncomfortable though. I know it’s entertainment and much of the content is over dramatic and edited well for the TV audiences, but I’m not sure the interview techniques of some of “Surrallen’s” chums necessarily sent a good message to prospective candidates hoping to make it in the real world.
They were very aggressive, inflammatory and some of the questions were dafter than a brush!
I’ve always been taught that interviewing prospects for a roles should be more about HOW they succeeded in various tasks or jobs, not just about what they say they did.
Having someone that “managed a team that achieved £10m in sales” is great! But shouldn’t we be more interested in HOW they reached that goal. What was the actual target? (It could have been £20m!) How did they motivate their team to succeed? What challenges did they face? How did they overcome obstacles? Where could they have improved?
Karen Brady asking why the candidates thought they “were the ones for the job” surprised me. What data can you go on when someone replies that they’re flexible, hardworking, a good team player, life and soul of the party!
Anyone can SAY anything to big themselves up. What we need to know are examples, detailed examples of how they have demonstrated those competencies.
Humility and having a self-critical streak is a big bonus too. No one is perfect. We all have room for improvement and being self-aware of our short-comings is a great skill to have because it demonstrates we have more to learn. It gives us a goal in our careers to get better at whatever we want to do.
I remember interviewing a guy once. He obviously felt he could show no weakness during the hour and a half I was with him. At the end I said I realised he felt he was good at lots of things but said I wanted to know what he wasn’t good at.
After a long sweaty pause he replied, “I’m not good at football!”
Having suggested he think of something work-related he said he needed to get better at Microsoft Office Excel.
We could all get better at Excel, couldn’t we?
