I thought she held her own in the boadroom in earlier series but she seemed take on a defeatist attitude when it mattered the most. Stella left school without any qualifications but she she did not draw attention to this. Why did Joanna mention she had little education? and then say she chose to set up a cleaning business because it was the simplest option. It seemed like she shot herself in the foot and her insecurity let her down...

I think there was a degree of that, but I think Joanna probably realised that her performance in the interviews made her getting through a long-shot.

I just can't believe she didn't research the companies.

I beat 85 other applicants to a job this year, and my boss told me it was because I had bothered to put in the research. Me and one other applicant scored the same mark on the interview, we were joint highest. It was solely the research I did that nudged me ahead of him.

Good for you......







Anyway, Joanna really didn't do herself any favours. She kept focusing on her lack of education and her business "just" being a cleaning business. It was too negative.

The saddest part was, she had the ability to come across well and more confident, like how she appeared previously, but she completely fell to peices.

However, she wasn't as disappointing as Jamie who couldn't construct a coherent sentence/ conversation with one of the interviewers.

I wasn't boasting (), simply pointing out that a rudimentary thing like doing a bit of research is highly valuble in an interview situation.

Not if you have not been through interviews or been coached, as Chris would have been, to pass them. You also have to ask how do you research - does she know how? When and how do you do it when they have no internet access after they turn up?.

Why did Paloma?

A lot of the candidates succumb to this, it must be the all the pressure. They're so busy digging themselves out of one hole, they get themselves in a deeper one.

She would be able to find out about all his companies when she applied for the process, before she was selected. If she wanted to work for him, surely this is something she, or anyone applying for the show, would be interested in doing. I started my research from scratch knowing nothing about the company I joined and wasn't coached.

I didn't say you were boasting, all I said was good for you. And I meant that.

Perhaps it all happened too soon! I had no idea that the contestants don't have internet access! I guess that explains why she knew no more then one line about the Company. I was wondering at the time "why didn't she just google it the night before?" I don't think she expected to get so far.

OK. I was just using it as an example because I think Joanna is very good and it's just a shame her interview didn't go better really.

Well, that's true. The interview process really showed up her insecurities and slight inferiority complex, so yeah, maybe she didn't think she would get selected.

Yes, my thoughts exactly. When Alan Sugar asked why he should hire her I think she responded that she was still in the competition it was almost as if she couldn't believe it herself. If you don't believe in yourself who else will?

Do some people arrive at the house with an interview file with Lord Sugar's CV in it? Not sure how far you would have to go though in the educational system to be able to do the research. Wiki tells you what he owns and you can search on company names from there. Wiki even links to a book title. You probably can even find company reports when you get searching. How many people can do that though - lots of journalists seemingly can't and not all studenst could. It would, however, be second nature to someone working in banking and they would have access to their share dealing data to do the research from one site with a few clicks.

You've just explained yourself how one would go about researching it. Why would you need to see Lord Sugar's CV to research a post?

I meant you would in effect have done the research to know what his Cv looks like...and you could find out about the interview panel too, or some of them.

Would someone who left school at 16 or whatever though ever be taught to do that? No one had even taught her how to use a spreadsheet - let alone to understand basic accounting or economics - so what can she be expected to know if she hasn't been taught it or had any reason to find out how to do it?

You need to know what his companies do, you don't need to know it in-depth.

Indeed, 30 minutes on the internet is all you would need to get enough information to get through the interview, perhaps spending a little time on one area such as property then directing the interview towards that as something you were particularly interested in.

It was held up as one of Simon Ambrose's positives from the interview stage that he had detailed knowledge of AS's business interests.

A great pity that Joanna lost confidence at the end, despite her appalling passive-agressive shtick with Jamie in the tour bus round (another sign of insecurity) she was one of my tips for the final - having had the gumption to start her own company she has nothing to feel defensive about, yes she is Joanna the cleaning lady but then Lord A is the computer salesman,.

Quite.

And knowing the names of the companies helps too, Joanna even struggled with that one.

Of course having done in depth research helps and is looked upon very positively but it's not the be all and end all, however barely knowing the names of companies and the total wealth of your knowledge being 'errr is it sommet to do with computas??' then that is pretty unacceptable.

The Interviews is a task as much as any of the others and one of the most important things about interviews is having some knowledge of who you're gonna work for. And this applies to pretty much every job on every level.

It's not even so much about the information you have managed to gather because obviously it is gonna be easier for the people who know where to look. What it is about is that you have show iniative and bothered to try and that is where Joanna fell flat.

+1, especially the last sentence.

she did seem to suffer from a bit of a chip on her shoulder, assuming that people will think less of her for being a cleaner. Unfortunately i know where she is coming from, all to often people in service industries get looked down on by the public for doing a moremenial job(boss or not) But being her own business there is huge potential to make lots of money as there is a huge market for contract cleaning as long as the price and quality is right. She should have done her homework on lord sugars business

I'm surprised you think the bar is so high. Regardless, why would you apply to work for a company if you didn't know anything about them - not even their name?

It sounds like Joanna thought she was entering into a competition and hadn't thought much about the prize. I can see that it would be easy to focus first on being selected, and second on getting through the tasks. She's not the first to be under-prepared for interviews.

We don't even know if the others were all better prepared.

Let's be realistic. The production company like to show aspects of the interviews that show the candidates squirming.

With both Stella and Joanna they clearly didn't have anything much to go with; nothing at all for Stella and the very worst thing they could come up with for Joanna was that she didn't have a handle on Sugar's current portfolio (it changes frequently) and she felt a little concerned that she 'only' ran a cleaning company. It was no big deal.