The biggest problem facing any journalist about to interview Margaret Mountford is what to call her. When former Apprentice candidate Stuart Baggs shouted “Margaret!”, as if greeting some long-lost benevolent aunt, in one of the earlier series, the look of disdain she turned on him could have killed a small animal – or possibly an entire field of ponies.
However, outside the infamous boardroom, Mountford is charm personified. In an honest and occasionally controversial speech at the Institute of Directors’ Women in Business conference, Mountford claimed that “it never occurred to me that there was anything I couldn’t do if I wanted to do it” . This no-nonsense approach was never more apparent than when she talked about role models, rubbishing the idea that women need other women to look up to.
“A role model is a model for the role and the role isn’t a gender role, is it? It’s a business role, or a political role,” she explains. She believes that role models are important and can be hugely beneficial, but thinks that women need to accept that a role model can be anyone, male or female.
“Somebody always has to be the first person to do it. If Margaret Thatcher had needed a role model, then we’d never have had a female prime minister,” she reasons, before adding, “although some of your readers might think this would have been a good thing.”
So you don’t think that successful women have a responsibility to help other women climb the ladder? “In a way they have a responsibility because of the way they’re perceived,” she explains. “If you look at MPs, for example Louise Mensch, who left halfway through, or Nadine Dorries who went on that show …” I’m a Celebrity? “Yes, that. What sort of message does that give out? There has to be a responsibility, a recognition of what the impact will be if you do that. That doesn’t mean that the women coming through need other women to be a role model. It’s slightly different.”
So what about quotas? “No one is going to listen to you if they think, ‘Oh, you’re only here because we need 40% women,” Mountford says firmly. “You’ve got to make the playing field level; it has to be a meritocracy. It might be that you don’t have any women, or it might be that you don’t have any men. Let’s get back to excellence – that’s what we want.”
So how do we counteract the current gender imbalance, if not with quotas and targets?
“If you look at the number of women coming through, it takes time. If the number of lawyers has been 50/50 at university, its going to take 30 years before those women are at the top levels. There’s a time-lag effect. You wouldn’t expect 50/50 representation – to be promoted you have to be there, and there are women who drop out and so that is bound to skew the percentages.”
I wonder out loud whether more balanced parental leave could go some way to solving this, but Mountford seems unconvinced. “There are plenty of partnerships where the woman is the main breadwinner, but it is more the other way round.”
“The important thing here is to try to ensure that where there is a woman with talent, that she is given due consideration, rather than just giving the job to a man because they like him and they all go to the same golf club or whatever.”
Given its current run, I feel obliged to ask about her stint on The Apprentice. Does she have any regrets about stepping into the public eye. “I used to regret it quite a lot,” she admits.
“At the beginning I found it very obtrusive, but it has given me the opportunity to do things that I wouldn’t otherwise have done: that’s a bonus. Sometimes I think: ‘I wish I could sit here and not be aware that there’s someone at another table whispering ‘Oh, it’s that woman from The Apprentice’, but as long as one is behaving reasonably and you don’t mind having your photo taken in Waitrose at 7.30am …”
“What people often don’t realise when they see The Apprentice,” she continues, warming to the subject, “is that everyone thinks they can do better than the candidates. Each series there are some who aren’t very good and they get weeded out, but by and large the winners have all been very, very good. Lots of them are doing well and they’ve benefited from the process, even if they didn’t enjoy it particularly at the time.”
As a seasoned interviewer, does she have any tips on what makes a good candidate?
“They need to listen to the question and answer the question, not come up with jargon,” she says immediately.
“Jargon is off-putting, even if one understands all of it. They have to relate what they’re doing to how they’re going to do that job. Also, stick to time. If you ask someone to do a five-minute presentation, it should be five minutes and it shouldn’t be gabbled.”
Anything else? “Look the part. You can’t help but be influenced by the way someone holds themselves and the way they speak. You have to allow for nerves, obviously, but if someone is too nervous for an interview for a senior post, then that’s a bad sign. They’ll have to deal with that in the business world. If they’re dumbstruck by nerves, you have to ask: are they going to be able to handle the job?”
And finally – are you aware that your left eyebrow has its own twitter account, I ask. Mountford looks vaguely horrified. “Really? How very odd. Well. Good to know it has a life of its own these days.”
