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Probably at least a small percentage of those reading this will have attended at least one group interview. The question is how effective are they? After all, there is nothing personal about them—it is the same information, just drawing on the qualifications of each person in the room. What is their purpose and how do most people feel about them? On a whole, they are not likely to be very effective because most people are less likely to open up about their skills and education when they are with a group of people, especially if it appears many people in the group are on a higher level.
The main question here would be to ask why an employer would even consider a group interview in the first place. In most places it results because they have many applicants for the same position and rather than have individual interviews, they put a group together in order to eliminate those who are not right for the position. It saves time for the Human Resources Department who has to select those that meet the requirements of the department. On the other hand, it should be obvious from the resume whether a person meets the minimum requirements, so wouldn’t it be better to bring in only those people who meet those minimum requirements? Fortunately, that is what happens in most cases but there are exceptions, which is where group interviews come into play.
Many people become rather timid and shy in this type of situation, so it really fails to serve the purpose for which it is intended. The more personal individual interview is more likely to help achieve the result that is intended rather than that of the group interview. Why would someone want to discuss details of previous employment in front of a group of people he or she doesn’t even know? Of course, you do not know the interviewer until you arrive for the interview, but that is one person. Perhaps any companies that utilize these types of interviews to separate those that are qualified from the rest of the applicants should look toward taking more time to review resumes instead of trying to bring together people who don’t know each other into a room at the same time. It certainly takes less time to review resumes than to have to take time to try to select the most qualified applicants from a group.
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