“A FORMAT THAT TAKES HOPEFUL INNOCENTS AND MOCKS THEM FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT”
Did you watch ‘The Intern’ last night? If you missed it, here’s what the critics said…
John Crace, The Guardian
“The Intern is basically the Apprentice by another name: a bunch of hopefuls jumping through fairly pointless hoops for the television cameras under the guise of competing for a job… Some of it was passably entertaining, but there wasn’t even a pretence at creating a level playing field by which to judge the contestants’ credentials.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
“Hilary does the boilerplate stuff about putting her name on the line but the truth is that she’s already besmirched her reputation by getting involved at all… I doubt that a jobless young person watching would have learnt anything useful about the world of work — the only possible excuse for a format that takes hopeful innocents and torments them for our entertainment.”
Florence Walters, The Telegraph
“We were set up for blood sport, but that’s not what we got. The Intern is The Apprentice for a generation facing the grim prospect that more than a million 18-24 year-olds are unemployed… The big disappointment was Devey. She proved oddly maternal and offered no genuinely helpful advice. There’s an irony here: Sugar’s iron fist gives The Apprentice its punch — and longevity — while Devey’s kindly manner may be the death of her own show.”
Andrew Billen, The Times
“Hilary Devey responded to the crisis in youth unemployment by setting three young jobless people to compete for a ‘managerial’ job at a five-star hotel. As if free internships are not humiliating enough, she employed actors to play ‘difficult’ guests, and then critiqued her supplicants if they failed to pacify them… Her credibility was denigrated the moment she signed on to this farrago.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express
“I couldn’t help feeling that if the true motive was to give young people a fair go, the people behind the programme would surely have got Devey thinking up ways to train and employ lots of them, not just compering stunts reminiscent of Candid Camera for a trio in a Kensington hotel.”
*WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE SHOW?
Entertaining, informative – or just pure mockery? Have your say by commenting below!
Truly appalling, youngsters mocked for not having the skills to deal with tricksy customers.
Why? Because you offered them no training whatsoever in customer service or the options available to them as staff.
You left them to sink or swim Hilary, without guidance or support. You judged them without ever giving them the tools to succeed.
Reputable employers simply don’t do that.
At least Hilary Devey always pays her interns.
When are we actually gonna get some real help with fighting graduate unemployment? I just wished they actually did something of real value. All this mocking around with young peoples lack of skills does not help, and sometimes it feels like organizations miss their part of the problem (good training, good leadership which inspires staff and the ability to grow for example).
I really liked Hilary at Dragon’s Den, I have not watched this show but by reading the reviews it does not sound like something to waste my time on.
Some things I wished we got to know whilst at school/university would be real industry/organizational insight. For example there are so many jobs I did not know existed in an organizations, and if I got to know that they did earlier it would have been beneficial after graduation. Especially as companies are complaining about graduates lacking skills.
I read the other day an article about youth unemployment in Sweden (in one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden), and they interviewed some young unemployed people in a tiny town called Ronneby in the county that had the highest rate of youth unemployment. They all dreamt of working as interior designer, stylist, music producer and painter(as in painting walls and building). Nothing wrong with having those dreams but all (expects maybe the last one) most likely will not happened in that tiny town.
However I just thought about why they had those dream jobs and concluded that it has a lot to do with what is visually, in our day to day lives (why people might dream of being fire fighters or police officers) and what you can see on TV, read about in magazines, newspapers etc.
Given that Hilary Devey is of the same type of plebutente as Mr Alan Sugar, Mr Sugar failing to achieve anything other than a few mediocre grades at O level before resigning himself to being a mere “Barrowboy Of Life”, I think that College and University Graduates need take any lectures from such plebutentes on any subject.
Aside from that, the programme is another piece of Popcorn TV – cheap to make, immediately consumable and instantly forgetable without any redeeming quality.
@Matilda
We’re not going to get any help with graduate employment. The prevailing view (among many) is one that mocks and belittles the unemployed, representing unemployment as a moral choice with smug self-satisfied condescension. It is much easier to blame people for their situation rather than do anything about the problem.
These kind of shows hide the real problem. In reality it has always been a battle (it is more pronounced in a recession) between who pays for the necessary training. Many employers don’t want/can’t afford to take the time and expense to train people. They’d prefer the cake ready-made, in that they expect people to have the skills straight out of school. Now, things like arithmatic, spelling and attitude should be taught to a good standard, but things like learning specific software takes opporuntity and experience. We get experience by practise and a classroom is not the best environment for becoming ‘work ready’.
We are just going round in circles, with useless ‘schemes’ to deal with unemployment and a bit of demonisation to keep the right sated for the time being. Until employers are willing to play their part nothing will change.
Employers wont change – blame Thatcherism.