CV embellishment is hardly rare.

It's been over 20 years since spelling and grammatical errors stopped being taken into consideration when marking exams, including public exams, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when people aged around 40 or younger make basic errors.

Lee was a surprising winner for me but I don't think Claire is any more capable. A bit of a sheister really.

No she wasnt. Ruth was good at selling but nothing else, a one trick pony who believed her own hype.


And when it's discovered, the person gets fired immediately. Plus, embellishing is when you make out you contributed more to a group project or something than you really did, what he did was out and out lie.

Agreed.

Ruth and Saira were very similar in that respect. Only excelled in one skill and lacked charisma.

Saira was insanely charismatic - she got an individual to cook her team's food for the farmer's market task gratis. She convinced several salespeople to give her products entirely free on the buying task. She ditched an ugly £100 bag on someone at the last minute of the Harrods task which they clearly didn't even want, just because she said so.

The problem was, as is so often the case with charismatic people, for every person entirely under her spell there was another wanting to have her strung up (the Tottenham man, the high-end artists), which meant that in the end she was far too risky a prospect, but her skills by no means ran to sales alone.


60% of the tasks in Series 2 were purely sales based, and the calendar task had a heavy element of sales to it. How were we supposed to find out whether she was good at anything else? For what it's worth, I thought the final task showed her to be the best manager out of any of them that year. She was extremely good at the buying/negotiating task as well - her group of three blew the other three mini teams out of the water (and let's face it, Sharon would have had very little to do with that)


I agree that was a major mistake. She shouldn't have had so much faith in Ansell, or indeed any at all in Mani.


My memory of the task isn't 100% but I think the PM had to decide whether their team sold extras and options at the start. Sharon decided to (her one good decision all series) and Ansell didn't. Admittedly Ruth should maybe have pushed that option forward.

I think based on the tasks alone (which were very narrow in scope that year) Ruth deserved to win, but Michelle did show more potential for growth and adaptability so it was a decision that could have legitimately gone either way.

Hi Monkseal

Perhaps 'uncharismatic' was the wrong choice of words. There was just something a little bit belligerant about Ruth and Saira at times (I remember the awful manner in which she handled the football task for example).

Don't get me wrong, they were both worthy finalists but I can understand why Sir Alan didn't hire them.

'Ullo.

Totally - I'd say belligerent was a good word for them (as well as Kristina "Direct Marketing To Five Year Olds" Grimes) - I just think that Ruth's belligerence wasn't such as to make her unhirable (same as Kristina), whereas I'd say Saira's was (she also went one step further than Lee - she didn't just lie on her CV, she bragged about it). They were none of them one-trick ponies though.

And in the end Ruth was against Michelle, who could be pretty damned abrasive herself. Saira was against Tim, who was the opposite.

I didn't watch the first two series, so can't really comment about Tim or Michelle. I totally agree with your comments about both Simon and Lee though.

personally i dont think those things would have happened if the cameras were not there, dave

Nope. Michelle was the rightful winner - she was a much more rounded individual. Ruth was louder, that's all!

Didnt Sir Alan also say about Ruth, that she worked better on her own. Give her a task, and she will get it done. She wasnt one for teams...either leading them or being in one. Ruth had a well rounded skill set...apart from any skill that had the word "team" in it.

Remeber that bit in the Taxi, where she starts singing "Here I go on my own"...that summed her up. She also went missing on the task that was set on a boat....again doing her own thing.

Everyone had cameras on them. Nobody else that year (or I think ever) had people lining up to give them free shit like Saira did.


From what I remember Ruth was definitely the more rounded individual. Although with Paul and Ansell maknig the final as well, I guess there were a lot of them that year.

my point is, i doubt if the cameras where not there, that they would have give her all that stuff for free, as they are not celebrities or anything, i mean if it is that easy to get stuff for free, nobody would ever need to buy anything ever again

But then couldn't you say that if it was that easy to get stuff for free when there's cameras there, why wasn't every other candidate doing it?

I personally couldn't believe Lee won after the lies and spelling mistakes on his CV. As much as I didn't like Claire, she would have done a better job and was a more deserving winner.

They were a bunch of chancers/barrowboys last year, tbh.

I didn't think Claire would have been a good winner. She did well on the wedding task, but not in many of the other tasks. She did however have an amazing ability for talking herself out of trouble! I thought she was a goner a couple of times.

But that doesn't make it right. Employees will face disciplinary action at my organisation if they are found to have lied on their CV. I'm sure other organisations would take similar action.

We debated this at length at the time and I believe the general consensus was that it depends on the lie. It's not as though he lied about qualifications, he just exaggerated the length of time spent on a course before leaving without quals to cover up gaps in his CV.

'Everybody' does it and most organisations wouldn't waste their time & resources checking out that sort of detail. And if they do, more fool them.

The whole episode made for great TV though!

No 'everybody' does not do it. You may find a high number of people lie or exaggerate on their CV, but you can't say everyone does it because that patently is not true.

It depends on what you mean by, 'checking out that sort of detail.' If an applicant states that they have a degree, then we would like to see that degree - it doesn't take long to validate it either so no great impact on resources.

Er, apart for the 'everbody' bit, that you quoted, did you read my post at all? 'Everybody' was in inverted commas for a reason. I also very clearly made a distinction between falsifying qualifications (which Lee did NOT do) and exaggerating timelines to tidy up gaps on your CV!

Yep he's still working for him and doing well - he's a nice bloke and deserved to win, he's a hard worker.
I know him and his fiance