Horrible Bosses: Donald Trump is the one celebrity entrepreneur people would least like to work for
You spend a third of your life at work (even if it sometimes feels like more), so you want, at least, to be sure that the person you’re working for deserves your precious time. Most of us hope for a boss who is fair, who inspires and motivates us, who we can learn a great deal from and who seems approachable and decent in his or her dealings with their staff. However, as anyone who has watched the film Horrible Bosses will know, there are a lot of bad eggs out there; bosses who lie, cheat, steal, undermine, or are utterly sleazy.
Which is why it’s perhaps unsurprising that the two celebrity entrepreneurs people would least like to work for, according to a survey of 1,500 adults by professional CV writing specialists Purple CV, are President-elect Donald Trump, and retailer Sir Philip Green. Both have been in the news recently, associated with various scandals: Trump for multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault, and Green for supposedly contributing to the bankruptcy of BHS after he sold it for £1 to a man with no retail experience to the one who have fallen behind on student loans. Hardly the kind of examples to set to a new generation of the workforce!
Thankfully, there are several inspiring entrepreneurs out there whom millennials would be proud to work for. Top of the list came Sir Richard Branson. After all, he’s a self-made man who left school at 15, and started several companies, including Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic, and is now worth approximately nearly $5billion.
In second place is Sir Alan Sugar, who we know best today as the star of The Apprentice. Another self-made man who didn’t go to university- in fact, he’s quoted as saying ‘it’s a waste of time’- the successful businessman has built up companies specialising in electronics and computers before becoming best known on TV for his famous catchphrase, ‘You’re fired!’.
Third on the list is Mark Zuckerberg. After all, he started what turned into Facebook at college, which turned into one of the most important and popular social networks of the 21st century.
Successful female entrepreneurs feature highly on the list too, with many youngsters wishing they could work for talk show host, actress and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey; 12.0% keen to be employed by former Spice Girl-turned-fashion-designer Victoria Beckham, and 3.1% who’d love to work for Facebook’s unsung hero Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg.
Your relationship with your boss is the most important factor in your working life. If you’ve got a great one, lucky you. But what makes a good boss? When it comes to the top quality people look for in a boss, just under a third of us say it’s the rewarding of hard work; after all, if you’re going to give your time and commitment to someone five days a week, you’d hope that it would be noticed, in the form of a promotion or pay rise.
Having a boss who is loyal; a boss who would stand by you and look after you the same way they stick with the same firm can make your day-to-day life perfect. We all want a boss who is being passionate about what his or her company does appeals to many aspiring business men and women too, as does him or her being personable and approachable.
But there is a chance your boss is a terrible leader and perhaps even a terrible person—not exactly the type of leader you want to work for. So what are the deadly sins, the worst qualities a boss can have? Generation Y believe the worst quality in a boss is having a cut throat attitude, and managing through fear. Surely the carrot over the stick works better? And a disrespectful attitude, a lack of praise or encouragement for staff and workplace favouritism are also viewed poorly by employees.
Finally, only 11% of people would willingly work for a celebrity entrepreneur unpaid; just like in The Internship, when Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s characters hoped to ge t a job at Google. The search engine’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, also attracted 2.9% of people who said they’d love to work for them. So they must be doing something right!
