It was one of the most captivating scenes in the BBC's The Apprentice series so far: puce-faced high-flyer Katie Hopkins wringing her hands as she contemplated throwing in the towel in the contest to become Sir Alan Sugar's employee. During the series, the 31-year-old management consultant has proved herself utterly ruthless and wished grisly deaths upon most of her fellow contestants while smiling sweetly from under her lashes, like Pollyanna gone bad.
The penultimate episode on Wednesday evening saw the remaining five contenders, including Hopkins, being rigorously grilled in a series of intense one-to-one interviews by Sir Alan's closest business buddies.
Although it was not shown, the female contestants referred to being asked about whether they intended taking maternity leave. After tearing apart the contestants' CVs and questioning them for hours, the trio promptly reported back.
This was when the Hopkins machine seemed to falter. However, despite all the highly visible reasons which Sugar could have used to dismiss her, it was a question about childcare arrangements which finally stopped her in her tracks. None of the people sitting round the board table actually believed this to be the real reason for turning down a place in the final, but it was more palatable to Sir Alan's pride than the truth: that Hopkins was a glory-seeker uninterested in taking up the job. Regardless of this, by enquiring about a prospective employee's family set-up was Sir Alan on shaky ground?
Mel Sangster, a lawyer with Dundas and Wilson in Edinburgh, thinks so. "By asking the question, they haven't broken the law but it does show a potential for a discriminatory attitude. If someone did ask those sorts of questions in an interview it would potentially provide the individual with grounds to use as evidence in a tribunal claim that they didn't get the job because of discrimination on the grounds of sex. It really opens up and provides evidence for the individual and a tribunal would certainly take that into account."
"Obviously there are requirements of the job, whether it is located in London, Edinburgh or Glasgow. We would recommend that if you are asking the question, you ask it in a consistent manner to everybody in a non-contentious manner. For example: The job is positioned in London. Does that create any difficulties for you?'"
Elaine Peacock, a consultant at Joslin Rowe in Glasgow, deals with recruitment to the financial sector. She believes that the interview styles employed by Sir Alan's henchmen were somewhat dated. "Some of the questioning was quite direct. Nowadays, from a diversity, PC and even an age discrimination point of view, you would not come across those questions. However, they all came to the same conclusions about the candidates that, using a more current interviewing method, you would have come to anyway."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article