Apprentice hopeful Alex Short has been the director of THREE failed recruitment ...

Apprentice hopeful Alex Short has previously been been the director of three failed recruitment firms, MailOnline can exclusively reveal.

Alex, 27, is the third candidate to be exposed in recent days as having a less than illustrious business background before appearing on the reality programme.

The businessman was one of two directors of a firm called JobsFindYou Ltd which was incorporated in April 2013 before his appointment was terminated a year later.

The firm, based in Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, never traded and filed accounts in 2014 as a dormant company, showing it had just £2 in the bank which was the sum total of the firm's assets. It was finally dissolved voluntarily in January 2017.

A second recruitment firm with an almost identical name - JobsFindU Ltd - was also incorporated on the same date as JobsFindYou in 2013.

Short and his business partner Alex Rodwell were directors, and Sabrina Rodwell acted as company secretary.

Again, the firm filed accounts as a dormant company with £2 before it was dissolved voluntarily in 2016.

A third recruitment firm called Wellshor Ltd was dissolved in October 2020 eight years after it was incorporated in July 2012.

It also had the same directors and filed accounts as dormant company in 2013 with assets totalling £100 in cash held at the bank.

It started trading the following year, recording total assets of £3,245 but it paid out £30,436 to creditors leaving Short and Rodwell shouldering a deficit of £25,321.

It was similarly in the red in 2015, to the tune of £26,972, and recording liabilities of exactly the same amount - £26,972 - in 2016 after Short had departed, and £26,972 again in 2017, and the same in 2018.

In 2019 it chalked-up a deficit of £2,222 before applying to be struck off the register of companies in April 2020, and it was finally dissolved in October that year.

Short went on to change tack and founded a commercial cleaning firm called Stag Commercial Cleaning Services Ltd in 2016 with a new business partner, Thomas Silvester.

Silvester resigned the following year and short took sole charge of the business, posting accounts for 2016/17 showing the company had £677 at the bank and total assets of £4,502, though it posted a loss of £5,800 due to paying out £10,202 to creditors.

It chalked up a profit of £4,329 in 2018, which dropped to £1,920 the following year, but earnings had dwindled to only £384 in 2020, despite the firm having current assets with £108,220, including £66,289 in cash at the bank.

It paid out £59,322 in sums owed to creditors, largely made up of tax payments and bank charges, and owed £50,000 in bank loans.

In March 20201, it registered a document outline a charge against the company giving a firm called Maketfinance Ltd the right to take over the assets of Short's firm should it fail in what appears to be a re-financing arrangement.

On January 6 this year, on the same day the first full episode of The Apprentice was broadcast by the BBC, Short's firm posted its accounts covering 2021, showing a dramatic increase in the firm's earnings to £144,996.

Short becomes the latest cast member to be exposed as having patchy business credentials and links to dissolved, low-income companies, including Lord Sugar's right hand man, Tim Campbell, the winner of the first series who is standing in for an injured Claude Littner, and current candidate Akshay Thakrar.

Meanwhile Akeem Bundu-Kamara, who boasts that he is on 'the pathway to making it', runs an ethical sportswear firm which was worth just £28 last year.

Despite the measly sum, Akeem, 30, bragged about being 'a numbers guy' in a summary of his talents on the show as he hoped to impress Lord Sugar.

The Apprentice continues on Thursday at 9pm on BBC1.