It's a strange bonus for 8 million pounds increase in incremental profit. Very strange. Unless the company is making billions year on year or she's lying.

wow a £1000 per one year of his life

So, durr.... does that mean he's 24 years old?

Dunno, I don't think he's ever mentioned his age, has he?

He looks 24 to me.

Good answer - and I'm somewhat amused that everyone has crawled away and not replied to you. I'm in the IT world and know exactly what a BA does - it's certainly not all 'beer & skittles' and it's quite possible to earn that sort of salary, as you say.

I do know a lot of people who contract and earn that sort of money and more, who actually aren't suitable for long-term permanent jobs - I have a feeling Lucinda is one of these, and probably an expert bullshitter as well. (Many contractors are great bullshitters - and they know when to get out too - which is why they do so well! )

I can't understand why people are getting so steamed up about these salaries - it can't be a North/South thing as Claire and Helene are both high earners and they're from the North - so what's the problem? Anyone can get a foot in the door in the business world, and work their way up if they really want to (look at Claire, an ex-Club 18/30 rep, and Helene with her ASBO-type background!). Comments like "Maybe they are supplementing their "business woman" salaries with "working girl" salaries in the niche area of servicing rich men with beret/fatty fetishes?" just show how jealous people are of others who do well. (And all that crap about "that's capitalism for you" - do us a favour and drag yourself into the 21st century! :yawn

Thanks for the info, Feldman. I was genuinely interested as I've never met one before.

I think you point it out here why or if Claire earns that money and that is because she has worked her way up but I have never seen somebody with an Equine Science degree earning that money at her age and with the attitude and ineptness she has shown in the series.

She is clearly lying.

But some dullards do just work their way up slowly and just take on more responsibilities that were actually made by people before them. They usually get the job because the company has expanded and they knew the area better and the people who made the business they have taken over make more money and they are in fact middle management.

But still - is she earning that money? I don't think so.

I think tonight's show has proved that you can't lie on The Apprentice and get away with it - as I said in another thread, I think every one of those CVs has been checked out to make sure they're all genuine (otherwise Lee wouldn't have been spotted - why him and no-one else?).

I concur with your second point however - I know complete berks who have just been in the right place at the right time. Annoying - but that's life!

I think its because their salaries are unrelated to what better qualified and smarter people would get as doctors, civil servants, teachers or university lecturers at that age and massively more than people could earn in the police, armed forces, medical or emergancy services.Its true that people in the city make more effectively gambling with other people's money and football players make more for kicking balls but it does show up the gap between salaries and doesn't actually suggest you have to be very able to make the money in the right job in the private sector.

perhaps her skill set is one that makes her employable?

she seems able to me.

few of the candidates would earn big money if the business world was ethical ...

at this moment in time i am on what is left of my student loan and child tax credits, and I am 40, probably unemployable because I look odd and HAVE to wear "shades" prescription dark tinted glasses, fortunately I am not money motivated and I am now Volunteering with a charity and I know they cannot afford to pay me , they appreciate me and I will get a glorious reference... I would never conform to earn mere money , I am who I am.. as repeated posts in other thread I lie on my CV.. I omit I have qualifications,because they are in subjects I really do not want to enter again, i.e a HND in fashion ..... and I omit my 4 years at UNI and then dropped out, because it seems I don't "stick" at things, although I have reasons for dropping out I would rather spend any interview I ever get NOT explaining it...
I would be his apprentice, I have common sense, very much a people person, watch my back and i am not thick as cow dung , and Apart from the burden of living in that London ( I lived there in 1991 for a year and HATED it... I would take any apprentice job for 10% of what he is paying

How big is this sample of people you've seen with Equine Science degrees who are the same age as Claire? One? lol.

If she did earn her company an extra £8m in one year, then her total package (including NI etc) represents around 1.5% of that. Why on earth isn't that believable?

£8m isn't a great deal on the turnover for someone like Superdrug. How many extra sales is that per day per store? It's probably one extra minor product.

Equally her bonuses are most likely low because based on the rest of her CV, she'd have snapped their hands off just for the 80k job.

It may all be bollocks, but it's perfectly believable.

Re business analysts who earn 4-5 times as much as us permies... I've seen many.

And as a permanent IT support person, I've had to help clear up the mess left behind by some consultants...

Lucinda has it all not sure were Claire gets the dosh from.

Clare’s commission was very small compared to the millions that she was claiming to have sold. However some things have a very small profit margin.

ie you might make 25% commission selling conservatories
or 0.5% selling petroleum products

A grand for every year of his life!

Thing is, how could Lucinda do all that when she claims to be 'useless with IT, can't even work her mobile phone' etc... surely you'd always have to be looking at/twiddling with spreadsheets, using powerpoint etc?

Lucindas salary was completely believable. About 7 or 8 years ago I worked as a contract tester, testing IT software - piss easy job really, and if you worked out my rate as an annual salary it would have been around £76k. An experienced BA contractor could easily earn £100k

What puzzles me more though is Claire. I can't quite work out how a permanent retail buyer would (a) be on so much money and (b) be in a position to affect the bottom line by £8m

But how could she do it without a decent level of IT skills, prozackid?

Sorry - this is a bit long! But I promised to answer the questions about being a Business Analyst.


Wot? By telling them to go away & reboot to see if that will work?! Now, THAT'S easy money, mate!

Feldman’s answer was spot on. Thanks for that. And as for how you go about becoming a BA – well, in my opinion experience is far more valuable than qualifications. Again, as Feldman said – some people (like me) take the IT route, and others get into it by being an expert in their particular field of business. You do get the “know-it-all-straight-out-of-university” types, particularly working for the Big Four – but I suspect these are the ones that alcockell’s encountered in the post above…

Being a BA is a liaison role. Someone in the business wants something – so you have to capture their requirements, and then give the requirements to someone who can produce a solution. Admittedly, it’s not rocket science, but it does require 3 distinct skills.

Firstly, and most importantly, you have to be excellent at communicating at all levels of the business. You could be proposing a new process for a fork-lift driver in a warehouse, or a new system to monitor the world’s stock exchanges for the smallest, earliest indication of change. You need to be able to communicate in terms that you and your audience understand to avoid ambiguity & the potential costs that could incur if you make a mistake. (Look at the extra costs that will be required to fix the Chinook helicopters, for instance). If you’re a BA on an IT project, you’ll also need to be able to talk to “techies”, and have enough background knowledge & experience to not look like a complete numpty and lose their respect. In addition to these verbal skills, you’ll need to produce no end of documentation. Therefore, it’s essential to be “fluent in your native language”, be good at grammar, and be able to use a spell-checker! Even as a "businessy" Business Analyst, I would've expected Lucinda to be a bit more IT literate, though. You need to be able to use all of the Microsoft Office tools.

The last two skills might sound obvious, but I have to mention them. First of all, you’ve got to be business-savvy. You need to understand how your business works in detail, how all its component parts fit and work together, and the objectives of top level management. And you have to be good at analysis! The key to analysis is understanding the “why”. (This could be “why does the business want a new system? Is something failing, or do they want to become even better, etc…or “why do they do something in a particular way? Maybe there’s a better way…).

The other thing to mention is the risk element of contracting. As a contractor, it’s our responsibility to find work. If we don’t work, we don’t get paid (and that includes sick pay & holidays). I’m lucky – last year I worked in the City for a year (I kept getting extensions to the contract), so I earned a fair amount. This has enabled me to take time off this year to do other things. Of course, many other contractors are money-grabbing materialists who just keep earning & earning and earning….

Anyway – I hope this helps answer the question. I hadn’t heard of Business Analysts, either. I was a lowly insurance clerk when a team of them came to interview me for a new computer system they were designing for our department – and I suddenly realised I could do their job, for a hell of a lot more money than I was being paid at the time. I studied for IT qualifications, gained a fair amount of experience in junior analysis roles & went from there. Hopefully this may help someone else do something similar.

Business Analysts don't necessarily need a high degree of IT skill. As long as they can use Word and Excel that would probably suffice. Remember that an IT BA is all about *Business* requirement gathering and not technical design - that would generally be the area of the Systems Analyst or Tech Architect. The most complex IT stuff I've seen a BA involved with in my organisation is database design, and that is just from the perspective of the data-tables and not the technical design of the database itself.

And she may not even be an IT BA

I was staggered by Clair's salary claims, if she had a job with that level of salary and the prestige that would have gone with a position commanding that salary why would she leave to take part in this progamme? It just does not add up to me.

my husband is a project manager in london and although he earns a decent wage they have a contracter in at the moment and she is being paid double what the others get paid and she isnt even doing a good job .

they get paid more as they have no security as are often on short term contracts. they have no guarantee of getting another contract as soon as one finishes so could earn 15k one month and nothing the next month.
my husband wants to start doing consultancy stuff but i am too scared. we have four kids to support and i would die of sheer panic if he was even out of work for a day!

She works in an environment I'd presume where she has to lead a team very well.... which we have all seen her go fantastically. If there is anyone in there I'd expect to be on 100K its lucinda.