Former Apprentice winner Lee McQueen is returning to his true calling of recruitment.

After working as a development director for Lord Sugar, where he built a sales team for Amscreen, the former Hays and Capita Resourcing recruiter is on the look out for great sales people. “There seems to be a gap in the market for good sales people,” McQueen, winner of the BBC’s The Apprentice TV show in 2008, told Recruiter.

McQueen is looking for raw talent, and is prepared to scour the market to find it - “from students, who don’t know what they are doing with themselves, to people working on market stalls”.

McQueen said he wants to help corporates and SMEs to engage and grow their own sales staff, and then to set up internal sales academies. “I believe sales is the foundation of every business,” he said.

Once McQueen and his team have selected candidates, clients will be invited to see them in action. These will be almost “Apprentice-style tasks”, that identify those with leadership qualities, and show how well people work in a team, McQueen explained. “It’s almost a case of ’look before you buy’,” he added.

McQueen and his company Raw Talent Academy is already working with The Guardian helping to “re-energise its sales team”.