Hey Trump! You're tired!


by Thad Greer - Date: 2007-02-26 - Word Count: 590 Share This!

If you didn't abandon watching "The Apprentice" after the first couple seasons, then you know this year has a few "twists." Namely the losing team has to sleep in tents outside while the winning team lives it up in a posh mansion overlooking Los Angeles. Big deal. Carolyn and George have been replaced with Ivanka and Donnie, Jr. and occasionally last season's winner Sean (who was an Executive Recruiter before selling out to The Donald) gets in on the action. I predict this season will be the last, primarily due to the fact that after 6 seasons the tasks have become ridiculously predictable and mundane. I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how "Survivor" has made it this long. How many times can you watch a group of people dig holes and lay under trees all day long? In the case of The Apprentice so many of the tasks have become nothing more than contests in salesmanship and hustle.

I can't remember the last time the teams were tasked with developing a truly creative solution to a business problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the significance of getting out there and beating the pavement, but hell, you can get middle school kids to wash cars and sell taco bowls (just two of the riveting episodes this season). Last night's edge-of-your-seat-thriller consisted of the two teams bottling honey and selling it at a local supermarket and whichever team sold the most won. That's different concept than the one when they made candy bars and sold them to strangers on the street. And 180 degrees opposite of when they had to make their own salad dressing and sell it at a farmer's market (wait, that was on Martha Stewart's "Apprentice"--they're all running together in my mind). The show has become so predictable that they don't even bother insulting your intelligence by making you guess which team is going to lose. Ten minutes into the show they cut to a commerical, show you the faces of the losing team and you can call in or text and vote on who you think should be fired. So back to the drama that was last night's episode: the two teams arrive at their respective supermarkets, one wearing khaki pants and matching polos emblazoned with their team's logo, while the second donned black suits and power ties. If you're not thinking beyond what you've just read, let me set the scene for you: having worked all day long, you run to the grocery to pick up some Hot Pockets and Ben & Jerry's, only to have two men in three-button suits harass you to buy multiple bottles of honey that they personally made that morning. Is it me or would that be really weird/annoying/obnoxious? Now the Men in Black didn't rely solely on their guerrilla grocery store approach, no sir, two of them went out and targeted local gas stations and eateries, cases of honey in hand, in order to generate some bulk sales. Do I need to actually say who won this task? The other team employed cutting-edge marketing strategies such as banners, signs and balloons. If this type of out-of-the-box thinking doesn't deserve a $250k annual salary, I don't know what does. Maybe being on The Apprentice is like being on Jeopardy: when you're at home every question seems like a softball pitch, but under the bright lights they put the screws to you. Moral of the story: don't cold call me and if you do, don't dress like an FBI agent.


Related Tags: cold call, cold calling, executive search, management recruiting, headhunter, search firm, retained search

Thad Greer is the Managing Partner with Priority Recruiting Solutions, Inc. http://www.priorityrecruiting.com, a nationwide retained, executive search firm headquartered in South Florida. He can be reached at 888-EZ2-SEARCH or thad@priorityrecruiting.com. He writes for the firm's monthly newsletter, "The Priority Recruiting Report", as well as his blog, "Confessions from a Serial Recruiter", http://serialrecruiter.blogspot.com.

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