Listen More than You Talk!

You know the autumn season has arrived when you see the old favourites like The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and The Apprentice return to our screens.

Being a recruitment business we are always interested to see what the next series of The Apprentice has to offer. Particularly as there always seems to be a recruitment consultant on the show and to see the rigorous recruitment process Alan Sugar has in store.

The first episode of Series 13 saw candidates produce and sell burgers and the winners being the team with the most profit. Simple you’d think, but not when you have a group of candidates all trying to shout louder than each other and often without any substance. So the boy’s team called themselves Vitality – a name that Lord Sugar said “sounds like something you take before you go out on date”.

The girls went with Graphene, a name that Lord Sugar said ‘sounds like a northern energy drink with gravy in it”. You’ve got to love those lines!

At the end of the task the girls turned round a healthy profit of £236.78 with the boys actually making a loss of £114.17.

Charles Burns, a 24 year old Management consultant clearly had a part to play in the failure of the task. As Lord Sugar pointed out he was disruptive to the point he stopped listening to Danny the Project Manager. He himself admitted he can talk too much and doesn’t always listen and that’s where his downfall lies!

As you know listening is the key to effective communication and without it messages can be easily misunderstood which was clearly evident on the first task.

As a recruitment business listening is key whether that be listening to our candidates or clients. If we don’t listen to candidates how can we really know what is important to them and find them their perfect job. If we don’t listen to clients how can we ever understand their requirements and know their business and culture to ultimately find them the right candidate.

Listening builds trust and when just one member of the team isn’t listening to instruction, the whole task can be jeopardised, which was clearly evident on the first show of The Apprentice.

So if we were to give Charles one piece of advice it would be the same advice Edward Branson gave his son Richard – “listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak”