Group Interviews:

A Tone-Deaf Hiring Circus Masked as Efficiency. In actuality: employers are making hopeful applicants duke it out like Hunger Games. Group interviews need to be discontinued - ASAP!

GROUP INTERVIEWSJOBSCOMPETITIONEMPLOYERS

HBIC

6/9/20254 min read

In an era where workplace mental health and hiring transparency are hot topics, group interviews remain one of the most tone-deaf and exploitative hiring practices still in use today. Touted as a time-saving or cost-efficient method by employers, the reality for applicants is far grimmer: a gladiator-style audition where hopefuls are forced to “compete” for attention and approval—often without prior warning.

Imagine this: You’re preparing for what you assume will be a standard one-on-one interview. You’ve researched the company, practiced thoughtful responses, and perhaps even bought a new outfit. You arrive only to realize that you're not being individually assessed based on merit—you’ve walked into a high-pressure social contest where your value is reduced to how well you can outperform strangers in real-time. Welcome to the group interview.

A Game Show Disguised as a Hiring Process

Let’s call it what it is: spectacle. Candidates aren’t evaluated solely on experience, aptitude, or compatibility with the company culture. They're thrown into a room, asked identical questions, and subtly encouraged to one-up each other in a bizarre contest of charm, wit, and anxiety management. It’s less about substance and more about showmanship.

And it gets worse. There's a quietly circulating belief (and a few anecdotes that hint at its legitimacy) that some managers treat group interviews as amusement, even placing informal bets on who will shine or bomb spectacularly. While hard to prove, the mere plausibility speaks volumes about the power imbalance and lack of professionalism embedded in this practice.

Pressure Cooker for the Desperate

The job market is already a soul-sucking landscape of ghosted applications, vague job descriptions, and rejection silence. Add to that the psychological strain of being told—on the spot—to essentially duel with others for the same position, and you have a system designed to break rather than build. It’s not just rude; it’s dehumanizing.

Group interviews can trigger insecurity and social anxiety. Instead of fostering a conversation where candidates reveal their potential, the environment encourages surface-level performances—answers tailored not for honesty but for applause.

False Positives and Firing Risks

Let’s entertain for a second that a group interview does find a charismatic candidate who “wins” the room. Does that mean they’ll actually perform on the job? Not necessarily. A smooth talker may ace the group setting but flounder in day-to-day tasks. Meanwhile, a more qualified applicant—perhaps quieter or introverted—may be overlooked simply because they didn’t dominate the room. This leads to a high risk of bad hires, which costs the company money, morale, and time. In many cases, the role is reposted within months, restarting the same broken cycle.

Legal? Yes. Ethical? Not Quite.

You might ask, “How is this even legal?” Legality doesn’t equal fairness. No law prohibits a company from interviewing multiple people at once. But the ethical implications are worth examining. Candidates are often not told in advance that their interview will be shared. That lack of transparency, paired with the psychological burden of a public audition, makes group interviews a gross misuse of power under the guise of preservation.

What Needs to Change

Companies must rethink how they assess talent. If the goal is truly to find the right person for the job, then the process should be tailored to bring out individual strengths—not pit applicants against each other in a performative free-for-all.

Recruitment isn’t a talent show. It's not The Hunger Games. It’s the beginning of what should be a mutually respectful professional relationship. Group interviews fail to recognize the individuality of candidates and instead exploit their vulnerability to pinch a few bucks of budget or a couple of hours of HR’s time.

If businesses want real talent, they need to stop treating hiring like entertainment and start treating it like the serious, human-centered process it should be.