Melody’s connection in wishing to be the next Apprentice comes to an end!

Last night brought an end to Black Country-based Melody Hossaini’s participation in the latest series of The Apprentice.

She was a project manager for the selling and reinvestment task and not listening and connecting to what the task was, proved to be her downfall.

It would seem for many of the project managers in this latest series that they connect more with the importance of the title of project manager and not necessarily to what the actual role is or even more scarily was what the purpose of the task is.

Thinking back to those who have so far been fired, a high percentage must be those who were project managers; all hot air and no substance were it counted i.e. in results and understanding.

No matter which team lost the task last night the writing was on the wall for one of the project managers to go as they were clearly not up to the job at hand. Don’t get us wrong it’s like anything it’s easy to sit back and criticise others from the comfort of your armchair but there were some fundamental oversights which wouldn’t bode well for any aspiring business person let a loan a candidate on the apprentice.

Melody Hossaini seemed to feel that it was okay to try retail outlets with a view to selling them items which she was looking to realise the recommended retail rate, worse than that she was trying £1 shops to sell £15 products too – it really doesn’t take rocket science to know that it would be time wasted.

Her team member advised her that nodding dogs were a good seller as he had sold the only 3 he had within the first half an hour of setting up his stall on the Southbank.

As this was a buying and selling task you would of course naturally think that more nodding dogs would be bought. Well, Melody’s view was slightly different which was to instead buy dual-purpose digital photo frames and clocks which was an untested item from the day prior.

She also made a grave error in judgment in instructing her team member to fulfil the requirement of the supply of 30 duvet covers to another retail outlet at not very good margins. The error was not really in trying to actually sell the items but in regard to what would be lost in trying to do so.

The time lost in fulfilling the order worked out more costly than the low margins to be realised, her team member had to close her stall and effectively go off in search of 30 duvets which took a total of 4 hours meaning also that the retail shop they were looking to supply had closed.

Now we have missed something more finite in the details of the task but surely being based in London, being told that nodding dogs with union jacks sell – you would have thought it a fair bet to target products of low value to the public and more importantly the tourist trade.

On the second day Melody had a suggestion from a team member for her to take over as project manager and for Melody to focus more on the sales aspect, this in our view was an opportunity missed by Melody. No matter how big a pill is, would have been to step down, the important thing at that point would have been to survive so as to be able to participate in next week’s task.

During the boardroom, discussion Melody fended her corner well, but perhaps overdone on the defensive talking - so much so that whilst Sir Alan, Karen and Nick deliberated who should go Karen said to Sir Alan that "If you went into business with Melody, your board meeting would be a very long affair."

Again, how the task carried out on the apprentice last night highlights that the candidates need to connect with what’s required of them and not connect to the titles and what they’ve done in the past, as much of it is all hot air.

Catch up last nights firing and you'll see that actions speak louder than words……