From: bizjournals.com/boston/how-to/

Question: Should we have job candidates do group activities with each other?

The company I work for is very keen on having a multi-stage hiring process, both for new staff and when applying for internal vacancies. This is all fairly standard I think — things like psychometric tests, written projects, and typical face-to-face “tell me about a time when…” type interviews.

Something they’ve recently introduced on top of this is the idea of the group project, which tends to come in before the interview but after everything else (although most recently it was the final part of the process, with candidates having been eliminated after each of the other steps).

So they assemble a group (about six to eight) of the candidates who’ve progressed to this point in a room and hand them a task. Sometimes this is related to our particular business, but often they are imaginary scenarios.

For instance: “There’s been a nuclear apocalypse. There are 12 people alive in a bunker but there’s only enough provisions to keep six of them alive. Here is a list of the people you have and their backgrounds/abilities. Decide as a group who you’ll save and who you’ll cast out into the nuclear wasteland.”

Or “You’ve formed a new pop group. Decide on your name, style, marketing technique and produce a plan for your next video.” Things like that.

You discuss it as a group for about half an hour (all the while there are several management/HR people sitting in a corner in silence, each of whom has a person in the group that they’re watching/making notes on), then you make a five-minute presentation showing your thinking and the conclusion you’ve come to.

It’s a strange process to experience, especially because often in these groups there are a lot of big personalities who are all desperate to get their voices heard and to feel that they’re shining more than everyone else, and that’s something that’s made worse by the fact it’s part of a recruitment process rather than just part of the day-to-day job (people who seem generally quite laid back suddenly become very outspoken).

I’ve had to do this a couple of times and have always done quite well, but I’m unsure of what value there is in this or what sort of game-plan I should have to stand out in these activities. Previously I’ve just gone for being a normal, pleasant human being and not being overbearing, but I can’t believe there’s not more to it than that (and I’d have hoped that by that point in the hiring process those kind of traits would already be pretty obvious).

Is this something you’ve ever used as a selection technique? Can you shed any light on what people in recruitment or management are looking for when they do these kinds of things? Or on what a candidate would need to do to be considered successful at this sort of activity?

Answer:

Hell, no, I don’t do this. Nor should your employer. It’s an interview strategy of people who don’t know how to interview well, and who aren’t clear on the specific qualities or skills they need to be assessing.

If anyone ever wants you to interview with a group of other job candidates, run screaming.

Seriously.

It’s demeaning, most people find it awkward, and it’s not useful in gathering information about what people will be like on the job. (By the way, I’d throw out those psychometric tests your employer is using too.)

The way you hire good people is this:

• You have rigorous in-depth interviews where you probe into how they think, how they’ve operated in the past, and what they’ve achieved.
• You use exercises and simulations to see them doing the work you’d be hiring them for (or as close to it as you can realistically get).
• You talk to people they’ve worked with in the past, and you thoroughly probe into those experiences.

You do not create artificial situations where they’re forced to work with other job candidates, or condescend to them with “you’ve formed a new pop group” scenarios, or otherwise treat them like performing monkeys.