Good evening all and welcome to the post-interviews boardroom.

Are all candidates here?

I'm here

Good evening Lady Sugar I'm here.

Good evening! I am here

I will be posting on Carlisle's behalf. All of my future posts in here come from him.

Good Evening, I'm here

Alright.

How do you all feel about your interviews?

Which interview do you feel went the best for you and which one went the worst?

I think my interviews went quite well? I think I managed to defend my points quite well and I do believe I did the best I could in them.

If I was to pick the one that went best, I would say probably Gav's as I feel as if I managed to get my views across the best in it and was able to confidently defend myself against any concerns that were raised. Although of the three interviewers Gav was also the hardest to read so I'm not entirely sure about that! If not him, then Alex's.

In regards to picking a worst. It'd have to be Zaks. Whilst I don't think it necessarily went bad, I do think that I was perhaps a little bit less 'controlled' in my answers at times.

I felt like all of them went pretty well actually, and I felt I was able to take whatever was thrown at me and defend myself with sufficient evidence. If I had to pick a best and worst, I would probably pick Gav's as my favourite as I think I was able to get the best message about me and my strengths through that interview, and probably Zak's as the worst purely because I prefer to talk about myself and the strengths I have rather than badmouthing others, and his was mostly based around the other candidates. I did feel that they all went well however

I think all 3 of my interviews went really well! Although I admit I felt that they were cut a little short? I could have happily chatted to Zak/Alex/Gav for longer!

As for which one I felt went best/worst, I'd say Alex's went worst. Just because I felt he had some questions which were quite a bit more difficult to answer than Zak/Gav. I think Zak's went best as, opposite to Alex's, I think all of his questions were fairly straightforward.

Well, yours were quite short but other candidates had longer, more detailed responses.

Lack of enthusiasm again?

I feel all my interviews went quite well and felt I could've spoke a bit longer in a few of the interviews so at the end of two of them when I was asked is there anything else you'd like to say I added a few of those things.

I think Gav's interview went the best as I got to say the most of what I think went strongest for me and I got to go into quite a lot of detail of what I think I did strongly on each individual task. I'd say Alex's maybe went a little bit weaker than the others as it was the shortest and I was asked to badmouth a few of the candidates and I'd rather talk about my own strengths as opposed to others weaknesses.

In your interviews, Niall, I noticed that you admitted a couple of time that you peaked early on in the competition. Do you think this is acceptable? I want an apprentice that continues to impress.

You say you don't like badmouthing people yet a couple of times in the interviews you ranted about the same few things, such as Carlisle calling you names. I realise this has upset you but are you unable to put things behind you? Holding grudges isn't a favourable trait.

This "lack of enthusiasm" thing is starting to annoy me, because it's bollocks. My answers for everything (in DSA and out) always tend to be short (which hasn't given me any problems at all), but they contain no less detail or crucial information than a War & Peace length response. It's about quality, not quantity and I don't think I answered any question inadequately. I managed to say just as much by saying a lot less, which I think is more valuable. Why? Because you don't have to search through a lot of guff in my answers to understand what I'm saying. It's right there in front of you, plain as day.

I do think it's acceptable, as although I think I probably peaked at task 3, I think I've been able to maintain this standard throughout, with the only exceptions probably being when I wasn't able to be there to contribute. I think whilst the journey trajectory can be appealing in games like this, I don't think it is completely needed to show you're a strong candidate.

Although you may have been "controlled" during the interviews, one of my interviewers gave feedback stating that you don't take criticism well and you go into "hyper-defensive mode" where all bets are off. Thoughts?

I definitely agree with that I don't think i'm the best at taking criticism, but at the same time I definitely don't think I'm the worst, even out of those left in the process!

I don't think in the interviews that is a fair statement to make though as I don't feel like I went into "hyper-defensive mode". I think it could definitely be true about a certain boardroom, however I don't think there was any time during the interviews I went into an 'all bets off' mode. Unless I did it without realising, I don't think it's particularly true because I felt as if I remained composed throughout the interviews.

Also I know it's not my place, but in response to the comment to Katie, in my defense the only things I said that she was vile, vicious and that she was a liar. Although she had branded me the latter multiple times before I threw the word out.

Having read through the interviews, I feel I've gotten a better insight with the longer responses, rather than it being a lot of guff.

It was pointed out to me by an interviewer that when asked for 3 good qualities, you only listed 2. What would the third one be?

I listed three, I just didn't explicitly state that the third was another quality so they must have missed it. The three were the ability to take control and handle a situation effectively when I can see it going south, handle difficulty, sometimes irrelevant, questions from other people in a quick, efficient and effective manner and lastly the ability to lead and still contribute creatively and doing my fair share of the work instead of just delegating.

Katie and Carlisle, I'm well aware of how you feel about each other but I'm going to have to ask you not to start this up again. I'm asking about you and your personalities and your skills. If you mention each other again it will reflect very badly on you.

If you could each pick a task to redo, which one would it be and what would you change about it?

I would re-do the Board Games task from Task 2 and have secured our end concept was stronger. Looking back at it, I felt we lost the task on Day 1 after our concept wasn't original enough. I would've got my team to brainstorm longer. Despite the fact I was praised by your advisor as the strongest team member I wish our idea was more creative and original. Board games is something I've openly admitted I don't know a lot about but I feel if we made our concept stronger we could have won that task.

This task made me aware that we'd need to be more creative in later tasks so the next two tasks I PM'd I made sure our concepts were the strongest they could be and as a result my team won. I feel I've been consistently strong at finding the best ideas the team have suggested in brainstorming and making it the strongest I can be. Every single idea I've backed which my team has gone with we've won that task. I feel I've a really strong ability to recognise the best ideas in the brainstorm session and select them to secure our team win tasks. I feel this is a key skill which I possess as I've never once strongly backed an idea my team has lost only tasks my team has won.

Well my weakest task was probably only my weakest task because I wasn't there for a considerable amount of time for, so obviously the thing I would change about that would be making sure I was there more often, however that wasn't really possible considering my circumstances. So I think I'd pick Task 1, which I don't think was a particularly bad task for me and I think I contributed to the pitch and questions well, but I think I was finding my feet at that stage as it was my first time doing a game like this and I wasn't really sure what to expect, so if I went back re-did it I would have tried to make sure I spoke up more and made my presence more clear, just so I could have stuck out as a contender from the beginning

If I could go back and redo a task it would have to be Task Three. I think in hindsight the Galapagos was definitely not the right way forward and despite the fact I did get more 'buys' than the rest of the team, I do think that I could've gotten a lot more as I do believe my pitch was strong enough that if I didn't make the mistake with costings I would've been able to have gotten a lot more buys.

However if it was down to just me then I would want to redo Task Two as I do feel as if it was my weakest task in regards to my contribution. Although I did everything asked of me, I do think it was perhaps the task I did the least in, and put the least amount of effort into. Which is ironic, because I actually love boardgames.

Either task 3 or task 8. With hindsight, I think I would have gone about task 3 quite a bit differently by not going so far afield and making sure everything we had was flat-out cheap and not just good value for money. Really that's where the task went wrong for us and I'd hope that things would have end quite a bit differently if we had done things that way. I'd also have kept my concerns over pricing to myself until I had it clarified - it seems me voicing my concerns over this to me team mates didn't achieve anything beyond confusing them, although I was very clear how it was going to work in my PM about it later that day. Perhaps I should have been clearer.

Alternatively, task 8 is the one which has probably left the worst impression of me to date and I would have made sure I managed to get a lot more done on the task than I actually did. I'd also have made it a lot clearer (to Carlisle) what I had actually done, because I got the impression he thought I'd only made up the timetable, which wasn't the case as I'd written up half of something he'd asked Amy to do, but never mentioned it to him (& idk if Amy did either, although she might have done, I never asked).