Bill Rancic, "You're hired." Those were the magic words for the Chicago cigar entrepreneur, who topped Kwame Jackson to win "The Apprentice" Thursday night and score a job with Donald Trump.

During the live decision, Rancic was offered the chance to lead the construction of a new Trump Hotel and Tower in Chicago or a new golf club and resort in Los Angeles overlooking the Pacific. He chose to work in his hometown of Chicago, and Trump then allowed Bill to join him on the other side of the table.

"For right now," Trump said at 10:34 p.m., "Bill, you're hired."

The in-studio audience cheered, and Bill and Kwame embraced.

The NBC series, which has been a surprise hit of the season, wrapped with a two-hour finale, capping a 15-week contest in which 16 aggressive job applicants vied for a $250,000-a-year job with The Donald.

The final competition boiled down to the street-smart Rancic, 32, founder of a multimillion-dollar Internet cigar company in Chicago, and soft-spoken Harvard MBA Kwame Jackson, 29, who hails from Charlotte, N.C., and most recently was an investment manager for Goldman Sachs on Wall Street.

Much of the finale was pre-recorded, with Bill assigned the task of running the Chrysler Trump Golf Tournament at Trump National Golf Club in New York's Westchester County. Privately, he admitted, "You can feel the pressure bearing down on your back."

Kwame, meanwhile, oversaw a Jessica Simpson concert at the Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. Reflecting upon the experience, he observed, "You're not only doing your job, you're doing everybody else's job, too."

Both men picked their staff members from the show's recent castoffs, including the contestant everyone loved to hate, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, who, while working for Kwame, managed not to find Simpson at the airport -- though the star was eventually found. (She called her production manager and he got her to the hotel -- and Omarosa told Trump that Simpson's getting lost was Kwame's fault.)

Bill only misplaced a placard sign, and patted himself on the back over the fact that, in his opinion, "the golf tournament came off seamless."

The same couldn't be said of the initial activities surrounding the Simpson concert. The star was not there when Trump arrived for the "meet-and-greet" session, which did not reflect well upon Kwame.

But then the concert came off successfully, "and I know I did a good job," said Kwame, who repeatedly referred to Trump as "an icon."

In the final analysis, Trump questioned Kwame's intensity and drive, forcing the prospective employee to admit he's laid-back. The accusation that Bill appeared stressful during the golf tourney was countered by his defense of himself, in which he said he had a blueprint for every scenario that might have cropped up, and "I have entrepreneurial blood in my veins."

Turning up the heat on the questioning a notch, Trump grilled Kwame on his not firing Omarosa for her deceptions. "I would have fired her," said Trump, right before firing Kwame.

Rather than using the show's usual setting -- an overly ornate boardroom in Fifth Avenue's Trump Tower -- the final decision was broadcast live from New York's Rockefeller Center, in NBC's Studio 8-H, home to "Saturday Night Live."

Given the New York base of the show, viewing parties took place all over town during the finale -- including at the World Bar near the United Nations, in the Trump World Tower.

There, bartenders were offering a special "You're Hired!" cocktail, consisting mostly of cognac -- and charging a very Trump-like $1,000 a glass.