Tonight it’s the final of The Apprentice, the ‘job interview from hell’. After weeks of bitching, back-stabbing, and making (usually very small amounts of) money doing things they’ve never done before, one of the candidates will finally hear the words “You’re hired”. They’ll then get a hefty salary and a chance to learn how to manage a business at the feet of Sir Alan Sugar.

Clearly the programme is more about entertainment than recruitment, but let’s take it at face value for a moment. The interview process is supposed to be Sir Alan’s way of finding the best of Britain’s emerging entrepreneurs. But is success on the tasks likely to indicate that a candidate has the skills needed for success in business?

The tasks certainly test some relevant skills. If you’re a good salesperson, then you’re likely to do better on many of the tasks than if you’re a bad one. If you present well, then that will help on some tasks too. And if you have some basic business acumen then you’re less likely to end up trying to flog a Ferrari to people shopping for cheap groceries and cut-price clothing than if you don’t.

However, there are a number of reasons for thinking that the process is less than ideal.

For a start, the tasks are too hands-on. In the real world, you won’t find many managers identifying fish or staying up all night pressing hotel laundry, but being unable (or unwilling) to do these kinds of things is exactly what gets some candidates fired. Watching the candidates outsource work to people who can do it better and more efficiently than they can wouldn’t make for great television, but it would give us more insight into their business skills.

Then there’s the problem that the process tests for the wrong kind of people skills. Most businesses have a clear management structure, and everyone knows their place in it. If you’re in charge, then everyone knows you’re in charge, and attempts to usurp your authority will be relatively rare. As a Project Manager in The Apprentice, your team members will all think of themselves as Managers temporarily ‘acting down’; it’s understood that there’s no particular reason why you’re the boss this time, and that you won’t be the boss for long, and your team will consequently be more difficult to manage and more liable to revolt. As Helene, who has plenty of real-world management experience put it, “I’m not used to having to work with fifteen gob-shites”.

Even more worrying is the fact that the tasks actively encourage unsustainable business practices. In most businesses, it pays to build a good relationship with a customer; selling to an existing customer tends to be much cheaper and easier than finding a new one. In The Apprentice, however, long-term business relationships are worthless. The tasks are never about which team comes back with the most credibility and contacts, and always about who comes back with the biggest pile of cash. Candidates who rip off their customers will do much better in the tasks than those who provide the kind of value that will make customers want to come back for more.

All of this shows that the candidate that’s most successful in the tasks isn’t necessarily the candidate that’s demonstrated the best business skills.