Donald Trump in The Apprentice
The Apprentice is a hit with the average television viewer. Hosted by real-estate mogul Donald Trump, the NBC reality series features 16 competitors who jockey for position as they perform various tasks designed to test business acumen.

The February 12 episode, simulcast on Global, drew 1.7 million viewers in Canada alone. But despite its popularity, the people in this country who fit the profile of the contestants - that is, young business owners, entrepreneurs and business students - are divided on whether the challenges assigned by Trump are a good way to predict success in the world of business.

"I think that some of the exercises they go under … are getting a little hokey, to tell you the truth," says Andrew Beattie, the 35-year-old president of Red Quill Intelligence Marketing, an Ottawa business-development firm.

"I wouldn't say that I'm watching it for educational purposes," adds Dan Barnholden, 29. Barnholden is enrolled in the MBA program at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.

The Apprentice takes the premise of the series that kicked off the current reality programming boom, Survivor, and changes the setting from a real jungle to the corporate jungle.

When Survivor premiered in 2000, television critics scrambled to explain its immense - and immediate - popularity. According to many observers, the show's appeal had less to do with its setting and more to do with the interaction between the competitors.

The pundits argued that viewers could relate to Survivor because they see similar jockeying for position - similar machinations and manipulations - going on in their own workplace. In other words, it was a hit because it was a metaphor for office politics.

Created by Mark Burnett (the producer who brought Survivor to North America), The Apprentice is literally about office politics. The prize isn't a large sum of cash, but a job as head of one of Trump's companies.

"This isn't a game. This is a 13-week job interview," the stern real-estate tycoon told them in the first episode.

The hopefuls are the usual assortment that the television audience has come to expect from reality shows: young, sexy and aggressive, with the usual nods to racial and social diversity.

What separates the people on The Apprentice from their counterparts on Fear Factor or Big Brother is that they have solid business credentials. Bill Rancic, for instance, runs an internet cigar business. Kristi Frank is co-owner of a swanky restaurant. Kwame Jackson has an MBA from Harvard University.

They are, in Trump's words, "16 of America's best and brightest young entrepreneurs."

That may be true, but the question remains: what do young business people think of the show?

For starters, do they really idolize Donald Trump? On the show, one contestant - Sammy Solovey - defined himself by an admiration for Trump that bordered on the obsequious. When Trump shook Sam's hand in the third episode, the young man reacted with unrestrained glee. As the official Apprentice website points out, it was "obviously one of the biggest moments in Sam's life."

Those in the know say this part of the program is not simply 1980s nostalgia; it's pretty close to the mark. "I don't think an entrepreneur can not respect Donald Trump," says Tony Lourakis, the 24-year-old president and CEO of Courier Complete, a Markham, Ont., firm that makes software for courier companies.

Lourakis, who points out that Trump has "one of the biggest egos I've ever seen in the world," has even made one of Trump's lines his own. In an early episode, Trump warned the members of the two teams that he would punish poor performance by "firing" them from the show. "It's either the suite or the street," Trump promised.

"That one I used in my office, the next day I think," Lourakis says with a laugh. He adds, however, that he doesn't believe there's anything to be learned about doing business from The Apprentice.

Danny Ardellini is the 33-year-old president of National Waste Services, a waste and recycling company in Pickering, Ont. Although his own role model is Wayne Huizenga, the sports mogul and former Blockbuster chief, Ardellini says he does look up to Trump. Like others, he points to the way Trump overcame his financial difficulties.

"You're talking about a guy who's almost lost everything and rebuilt his enterprise, right? So any business person can respect that."

According to Barnholden, Trump is the perfect host for a reality show like The Apprentice because he's "more of a caricature of success in the world of business."

"He's sort of overblown and over the top and everything," he says. "I think everyone loves his hair, right?"

Trump aside, what of the picture that the show paints of young entrepreneurs? Is that true to life?

"In some respects, I have to say 'Yeah,'" observes Beattie.

"I'm embarrassed by that," he adds. Although he's ashamed to admit it, Beattie says his colleagues are driven to the point of being full of themselves: "We have [huge] egos and we want to succeed almost at all costs. That's not uncommon."

"I think it's pretty accurate, actually," echoes Reid Ivens, 27, chief information officer for N-VisionIT Interactive, a website design firm located in Ottawa.

Ivens says that the early episodes, when Trump split the group up into male-only and female-only teams, were less believable. Once Trump reshuffled the teams after the men lost the first four challenges, Ivens believes the show moved closer to reality.

"With things mixed up, I think it is an accurate representation because there's so many personalities in business, you've got to account for all of them," he says. "And not everybody works together well."

Young Canadian business people are split, though, on the question of whether Trump's challenges are a good way to test the business skills of the competitors. In the debut episode, to name one already-famous example, Trump gave the two teams $250 each in seed money and a simple directive: make as much money selling lemonade on the streets of Manhattan as you can.

Jean-Paul Teskey, 33, is the president of Mississauga, Ont.-based Rumba Games (the company that manufactures the board-game version of Survivor). He is one of those who sees the challenges as designed for entertainment value.

"I just see it always being a little bit for shock value," he says. In Teskey's view, Trump's challenges don't get into the nitty-gritty of business.

"The exercises have been very elementary," echoes Beattie. "It's very much geared towards a TV audience."

Beattie believes a better test would be to get the two teams to do something like negotiate a land deal on Trump's behalf. Beattie acknowledges that doing so would lessen the broad-based appeal of The Apprentice, making it more of a "pure" business program like CBC's Venture.

Lourakis, who just closed a big deal after nine months of work, agrees that a more involved, prolonged test would make for a more realistic challenge; he also grants that a more realistic test would be less visually appealing. "That's not made for TV," he says. "They're not going to show somebody working nine months to close a $200,000 deal, so I can see why they use the ones they use."

Erica Mintz, 28, is of a different mind. Mintz is the owner of Unique Corporate Gifts, a gift service in Montreal. She realizes that Trump's challenges are silly, but she also sees virtue in them.

"It's like back to the basics," she says. Mintz likes how the tasks involve a specific goal with a clearly defined role for each of the participants: "I like the fact that they keep it sort of simple and I think that's a good lesson."

Mintz is unique in Canada. She is the only woman under 35 years old listed in Profit magazine's Hot 50, a directory of fast-growing Canadian companies.

Mintz, shades of the originally all-female Versacorp team, employs a six-woman sales team. One of the messages that seemed to emerge from the early episodes of The Apprentice is that someone like Mintz is on the right track because women have an advantage in the business world.

Although Mintz agrees that the women on The Apprentice are more resourceful than their male competitors, she also adds "I don't think the women are more driven than men. I think maybe women feel they have something to prove."

She also finds the women on the show to be catty back-stabbers: "My team is not at all that way."

Mintz recently held interviews for a sales position. While interviewing a female applicant she commented on the composition of the her sales force: "I don't know why, our team is really pretty much always female."

"Well," replied the interviewee, "don't you watch The Apprentice?"