True Business- real life for small businesses

The BBC’s businessfest that is “The Apprentice” has finally run its course for 2008; it returns in 2009.

First, a fact. Did you know that Sir Alan Sugar was not the first choice of tycoon for the top man’s job? Sugar’s good friend and retail giant Sir Philip Green was the Beeb’s number one choice.

But that’s by the bye: Sir Alan’s grizzled visage is now a permanent annual fixture on our screens, and he’s getting quite good at looking the part. I disagree with his judgement, though. Winner Lee McQueen is clearly a great chap; indeed all of the final four were superb recruits. But Claire was head and shoulders the better salesperson, both tenacious and balanced. In my opinion, as they say in footie, she was robbed!

Worse still, Lee had lied on his CV, and that’s the part which has got the UK’s business community exercised. A steady stream of Dragons from the Den have been quick to publicly say that they would fire anyone who had lied on their CV.

This is an interesting conundrum.

If it’s OK to lie on your CV, when does it become a problem? In politics and business, a whole new vocabulary has appeared in recent months to cover the gamut of dodgy chatter. Remember Hillary Clinton, last month, “mis-speaking” about landing under gunfire in Bosnia?

I think that, even though I’d love to be non-judgemental and clear, like so many things in life, there’s no black and white. Put bluntly, whether you can get away with CV bulls**t depends on:

• How good you are at the job in the first place
• Whether you are a likeable rogue or an inveterate sociopath
• Whether your lie is a little exaggeration or a triple whopper with cheese and extra mayo

A brilliant but flawed businessman can get away with blue murder.

A school-leaver with no skills, experience or contacts can’t get away with anything.

I’m afraid that’s life.

Let me say here that I have never lied on my CV. But there’s a good reason for that. When I left school and realised that the people applying for the jobs I wanted all had 20 years experience, I knew I had to try something out of the ordinary to get by. So I turned freelance, started a company, and bypassed the whole CV issue completely. My business card replaced my CV as a passport to work.

If I hadn’t been able to do that, I would certainly have been tempted to embellish my CV a little; and I do understand why younger people would want to do that, especially in the hope of a first step on the career ladder.

My problem with Lee McQueen is not the scale of his lie (dropped out of college, rather than did a course as claimed). It’s the stupidity. Why bother with a pointless lie- especially as Sir Alan is a champion of self-made men?

It’s not the lie that’s the problem. It’s the unsophisticated bull-in-a-china-shop gaucheness of it.

Good luck, Lee, but mind the crockery!