The day I interviewed for the Apprentice

After watching the Apprentice this year I decided, like many people, that I could probably do a much better job than most of the ones on the show so applied to take part in Series 6 that goes into production in Setpember.

Much to my shock I got accepted received an email on Thursday 2nd asking me to come for an interview on Friday 10th July.  Last year Steve (another employee of AffiliateFuture) also went for an interview but didn’t get past the first round so I was quite excited at the prospect of beating him!

The terms sounded awful though – ignoring the fact that you sign all your rights away it’s something that I couldn’t ever do – it potentially lasts 8 weeks and the email tells us that you only get 1 call per week to your friends and family.   I also love the job that I do and wasn’t interested in selling TV’s to Hospitals which is apparently what Yasmina, this year’s winner, is now doing!
So today I went to the interviews – I told the whole company about it and went purely for a bit of a giggle.

My interview time was meant to be at 3.45pm – I took off half a day from work and filled out the application form just hours before turning up – here are some of the questions on the form:

• What is the most INTERESTING thing about you?
• What tactics would you use on The Apprentice to make sure you win?
• What makes you DIFFERENT from all the other people applying for The Apprentice?
• Who is your role model (excluding Sir Alan Sugar), and why?
• How would someone who knows you well describe your best points?
• What makes you angry?
• What is the worst lie you have ever told?

As you can imagine some of those were quite difficult to imagine – I won’t go over my responses (as I don’t think I’ve saved them anywhere) but after his suggestion I did put Mark Smith (CEO of TMN Group) as my role model, partly because he suggested it but mostly because I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for him!

So onto the interviews…  I got there to a pretty large queue of people and realised that I certainly wasn’t going to get to see anyone at 3.45pm and was standing around talking to some of the others guys and girls for around till around 4.30pm when our group finally got seen… Everyone’s surname began with L that was around me by at least an hour so that gives you an idea of how long the auditions go on for.

Once inside we were sat in the waiting area (which was actually full – I had to stand) and called out in groups of 12 people.

Once called out you go into another room where there are 12 numbers on the floor and a desk in front of us with two senior producers – we were told that we had 30 seconds each to convince them why you we should be in the Apprentice and why we should get through to the next stage, each number was called our randomly and there wasn’t much time to prepare.  She did say that it was up to us if we wanted to make them laugh, cry or impressed within that time period.

I had to decide what to say – should I be honest and tell them that I didn’t really *want* to be the next apprentice?  Everyone was doing quite well and then my number was read out and I said something along these lines:

Hi my name is J Lil, formally known as James Little and the company I work for provide online marketing services.  I feel slightly guilty about being up here as I have a fantastic job that I enjoy but believe I have a tremendous amount of talent that I would love to showcase in front of the world.  I also promised myself and had a bet on that I’d get further than a colleague of mine called Steve who only made it this far last time.

My 30 seconds were over and I was impressed with the fact that I got the truth about Steve in there after all.

Once everyone has finished they called out three numbers (out of the 12) who then progress to the next stage; I was shocked to find I was one of them, perhaps they wanted to help me win that bet.

Next the three of us were taken to another waiting room and informed that the next stage would be a one on one interview with the video camera filming it – apparently there is meant to be a first one on one before this but it was running late in the day and they were over an hour behind schedule.

At this point I’d managed to speak to a few of the production staff and ask a couple of questions and was absolutely positive that I didn’t want to get any further – according to some of the friendly people I spoke to the show isn’t everything you would imagine.. If the 16 hour day tasks are not enough to put you off then being pretty much under house arrest when not doing tasks was a little too much for me, even if it did mean that the world would have to cope without seeing me on their TV screens for a while longer.

So after another 20 minutes or so of waiting around I was called in for my interview… they went over some of the questions in the application form and towards the end I told them that I honestly wasn’t interested in going any further and could find better use of my time off work as it doesn’t sound like the most fun experience; I didn’t want to waste anymore of anyone’s time and the interview was over and I got up to leave.

So that’s my Apprentice experience over with – it was an interesting afternoon where I met some very nice people but I can honestly say that I’m glad I bailed out and happy that I beat Steve past the first round which was my ultimate goal.   I’d miss my family, friends and job too much for the length of the production and if I’m honest, I’m not Alan Sugars biggest fan.

Good luck to anyone that attends these interviews and I look forward to watching the show without me in it!

Tags: Apprentice, BBC, TV