Congratulations to Alana for winning The Apprentice 2016! But what can we learn from the Apprentice contestants?

The 12th series of the Apprentice has now come to an end, and after weeks of tasks, Lord Alan Sugar and his trusted advisors have come to a decision - Cake Business Owner, Alana Spencer is his new business partner. But the Apprentice isn’t over! There is still a lot to learn from the show, there are so many characters that go onto the Apprentice. But here is what we can learn from the contestants of this series.

Alana

If you watched the Apprentice, I’m sure that you’d agree that after watching the first episode, you wouldn’t have said that Alana would be Lord Sugar's apprentice. Let alone get to the final! From the first week, Alana was overlooked, even in the 5th task, where the candidates had been living together for just over 5 weeks, Karthik forgot Alana’s name! It was only as the weeks continued that she became more demanding and stood up for herself - Alana’s voice was heard! It just goes to show that your voice is always heard, no matter who you are, no matter the industry.

You don’t have to put everyone down or be the biggest character in a group to make an impact, being yourself, making suggestions and listening to your Project Manager is just as respected, if not more.

Courtney

Novelty gift business owner Courtney Wood reached the final and came runner up to what was an exciting end to The Apprentice 2016. He was the cheeky chappy of the programme who seemed to bring a bit of fun to the tasks on which he won 8 out of 10. However, I am with Claude in saying that he did lack personality on many occasions, he did need ‘slapping round the face’ to wake him up a little bit. Throughout the programme we saw how toe curling it was to watch Courtney pitch. But in the final, with help from a speaking coach, he surprised us all with an incredibly eloquent presentation on his business plan - ‘Purple Whale’… still don't understand that name...

Courtney really did develop throughout the process, he shows that you can start off shy and develop over time to become somebody completely different to who you were before. He missed out to Alana’s Ridiculously Rich cakes, but Lord Sugar did not rule out that Courtney could do very well in the future.

Frances

You don’t have to be a winner to be successful, Frances certainly wasn’t! She lost 8/10 tasks, but that didn’t dishearten her - she only faltered at the last hurdle! She learnt from her mistakes. To put it bluntly, Frances is disorganised, and while I’m not saying that’s OK, it goes to show that you don’t have to be perfect to go far. Frances excelled in selling and her fiery personality shone through in that. From task to task, she would not be overlooked, and when it came to her being Project Manager - everyone knew about it!

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