What do you expect from the candidates on this day? What are you looking for?

I am looking for a very strong candidate who has done their due diligence and who turns up on the day with a watertight business plan. Someone I can feel incredibly confident in putting to Lord Sugar as a potential investment opportunity. I am not looking for someone to spout nonsensical ambitions for the future of their business without the figures and evidence to back this up. That is a waste of everybody’s time.

Do you look forward to this episode the same way the audience does?

Yes, absolutely. This is definitely the episode the viewers look forward to the most and for us it’s the time when we really get to test the candidates and see how rises to the challenge and who sinks.

How did you prepare for these interviews?

I work my way through all of their business plans, making note of anything that doesn’t quite add up, which I will make sure to question them on during their interview. They need to be able to provide the data to back up the claims they tend to make and the projections for their business’s future as written in their plans. I have spent time with the candidates over the course of the series, so it’s always interesting to see how they fare in this intense situation away from their fellow contestants, now they are on their own without a team to back them up.

Do you see yourself as a hard/ tough interviewer?

We are looking to find Lord Sugar’s next business partner, an investable candidate who will impress him and be worthy of this investment, so yes, maybe I could be considered as a tough interviewer, but the ideal candidate needs to be able to handle this kind of situation and line of questioning or they won’t be able to handle the difficulties faced when running a successful business.

What constitutes as a ‘successful’ interview for you?

A successful interviewee is someone who is confident in themselves as a business leader and in their proposed business strategy. Flowing conversation and strong answers that highlight they have prepared for the interview and that they have clear objectives for their business as well as the steps to achieve these.

However, sometimes a ‘successful’ interview can also be one where their business plan has holes and needs to be reworked but they carry themselves with confidence and you believe in their competence to eventually but successfully achieve their goals. Leadership needs vision, and a strong and usually successful leader in business is someone who has the conviction to persuade people to believe in their vision.

What constitutes as a failure of an interview?

Someone who is clearly not prepared and as a result is not equipped to answer tough questions on their business plans or how they intend to achieve anything they have put down on paper. I also don’t appreciate when it’s clear someone has not done their research on the interviewer or the company they’re being interviewed for. With regards to this specific situation, for me it’s as simple as an obvious lack of preparation equals a failure.