Big Brother will see you now

By Brian Wheeler
BBC News Online business reporter

Is this the future of graduate recruitment?

It has played host to tearful minor celebrities, shameless exhibitionists and hysterical teenagers.

Now the Big Brother house - the UK's most luxuriously-appointed detention centre - is to get a new breed of inmate.

The next group of young hopefuls to pass through its doors, in December, will be no less nervous or eager to please than previous contestants.

But there will be a lot more at stake at the end of their ordeal than a £70,000 cash prize and a brief moment in the media spotlight.

The 25 contestants will be competing for a highly sought-after job with one of the UK's leading advertising agencies.

Unique design

Grey advertising, whose multi-million pound client list includes Mars, Procter & Gamble and GlaxoSmithKline, has hired out the television house for its annual graduate recruitment round.

The lap of luxury?

The firm claims the building - which is festooned with hidden cameras and two-way mirrors - is tailor-made for weeding out unsuitable candidates.

It says the unique design will allow executives to observe candidates as they work on creative tests, without having to interrupt them constantly.

As in the hugely popular Channel 4 reality show, applicants have been asked to submit a video of themselves, rather than take part in conventional face-to-face interviews.

Creativity

The final 25 candidates - selected from thousands of applicants - will then spend an entire day locked in the Big Brother house at Elstree, Hertfordshire, carrying out a series of tasks designed to test their creativity and ability to work as a group.

The eventual winners - and Grey has not said how many, if any, will be chosen - will be given the good news the following day.

Sara Bennison, Grey's head of account management, said the process "won't be as cruel" as the real Big Brother, which lasts for 64 days and has frequently descended into tears and drunken rows.

"We are not going to be voting them out during the day.

"But we will be giving them tasks to perform and we will be calling them to the diary room if we want to speak to them.

"We will be using video cameras, but we are not planning to use the tapes for any kind of sinister purposes.

"Other than perhaps to humiliate them at their leaving do, 10 years hence!" Ms Bennison said.

Gimmick

Ms Bennison admitted the idea was essentially a "gimmick" designed to set Grey apart from other ad agencies in the battle to land the best graduates.

Creative tension: Big Brother has seen many rows

But there is also a serious side to the stunt, as presentational skills and the ability to work under pressure are vital to the job.

"We are in a creative business where fun is important," she told BBC News Online.

She said Grey was looking for creative, outgoing people "who love ads and who are interested in ideas".

And she denied the process would favour loud-mouthed attention-seekers, at the expense of genuinely creative candidates.

"There is always room for one or two of those sort of people in any agency, but we are looking for a mix of people," she said.

C-list celebrities

Using the Big Brother house gave executives a chance to eavesdrop on group work, rather than just seeing a finished presentation.

"That is one of the reasons why the house is so useful.

"It helps you to discover if one of the group is not a team player or is really irritating."

She added: "Quite a few of the people from the TV programme have landed jobs in the media, even if it is just as a C or D-list celebrity.

"Advertising is, arguably, a better long term career prospect!"

But she said there were no plans to use the Big Brother house for other recruitment drives.

"I don't think we will be recruiting our next CEO this way."