Working for Diddy

Sean Combs doesn't do Craigslist. That's because whenever the head of Bad Boy Entertainment needs some new blood for his empire he just puts together a reality show and has his potential employees prove their worth on MTV. That's exactly how Puff nabbed his newest hires, Mike Barber and Suzanne Siegel, the winners of I Want To Work For Diddy. We talked to the co-winners to find out what it's like to be the newest additions to Puffy's payroll.

Puff pulled one of his trademark swerves on the show's finale and declared you both co-winners. Were you bitter about having to share the spotlight?

Suzanne: You're going to think I'm fronting, but not even one bit. It's been my philosophy in life that there's room for everybody and someone else's dream being granted certainly doesn't take away from my dream. I get to work with Mike Barber and I always like working with Mike Barber.

Mike: We're in this together.

Word is you haven't been given your job assignments yet. Are you worried you'll become Diddy's personal umbrella holders?

Mike: To tell you the truth, I could care less about what he has me doing. It's all about humbling yourself. With Puff, you may not know the method to his madness, but at the end of the day he's trying to make you great. If you keep that understanding you'll be able to humble yourself and you'll be ready to do what he wants you to do.

Suzanne: Also, we did everything you could imagine on the show. We went from running up to Paris to cleaning his rims in the middle of the night. We're prepared for anything no matter how small or great the task is.

What were the toughest tasks on the show?

Mike: For me, it was working with Puff in the last challenge. When he's away from you it's so much easier to get your job done, but when he's watching every move you make the pressure's on. But when the pressure was on it made me a lot stronger, so I'm happy I was put in that position.

Suzanne: On the first challenge we had to run around New York for 24 hours straight in business attire and accomplish a thousand tasks and run a million errands and make the impossible possible. It was so exhausting and stressful and tiring and scary that I was like, ‘Oh my god. What am I in for?' That first day I was almost dead, but luckily I didn't die because I won [laughs].

Did you have any apprehensions going into the show?

Mike: I didn't want to be a reality TV star. Before this whole thing came up, I actually interviewed for the job. I went through six interviews with the staff of Bad Boy and the last interview was actually with Mr. Combs himself. I got a phone call and saw the caller id said Bad Boy Entertainment and I'm thinking I got the job. Instead, they tell me about the reality show.

That was a hell of an interview process.

Mike: I interviewed for that job from November 5th onto May 16th. That was a long job interview.

What impression did you get from your new boss after working with him on the show. Is he on another level?

Mike: He is. But the best thing about him is that he's far from what you see on TV. Everybody makes him out to be such a bad guy. That first day that we were working close with him everbody thought that he was going to son you at any minute. So you didn't want to do anything to mess up, but all we did was mess up [laughs]. After a while, when we were in his apartment, he told us to stop and put everything down and he said, "Are you nervous?” That's when I took a deep breath and realized he just wants the job done and there's no pressure. And if you mess up the only thing about it is he's going to make a joke about it. It's all about how you take the feedback and not letting your emotions get the best of you.

Suzanne: My impression of Puff is that he's spooky smart. Most people have one or two kind of smarts, but he's everything from street smart to intuitive about people to business smart to creative to a perfectionis. He's on point. He doesn't miss not one detail about anything. Besides that, he's tough, he's strict, he demands more than you think you can produce, but he has that sparkle in his eye and you know he's bugging out and you know he's having a good time. And you know at the end of the day he started out where we all started out.

Starting at a new place can be tough. Are you worried about getting dissed by Danity Kane in the Bad Boy lunchroom?

Suzanne: I think we may have a little more to prove than everyone else, but I'm not worried about proving it.

Mike: I'm actually a little nervous about day one, but I think everyone at Bad Boy will accept us with open arms. They could see throughout the show that we really wanted the job. The TV show came second. We were definitely on a job interview first and I think everyone at Bad Boy saw that. I just cant wait for day one.