It was a real shame that such a great organisation that does such good work ran such an awful interview process. It really was the worst one I have ever been to. A group interview with over 10 people for one position only where they only interviewed us all for an hour. They asked us to do a clapping game, twice, and play charades and asked "if you could have anything unlimited in the world what would it be?" along with similar unfruitful questions such as "describe something you learnt from your first job." Luckily all the other candidates were very graceful and good sports and participated eagerly but the experience was deeply humbling on a professional level as my pervious skills and experience were disregarded and I was assessed on my ability to act out actions or what I learnt in my first job 10 years ago. I barely say them writing any notes about us down and when they sent us away into groups they didn't send any of the interviewers with us so had no idea how we interacted with each other or solved the task as a team. The application process was a long one and for it to lead to such a terribly thought out interview felt like a huge waste of time. In addition to this external candidates interviewed alongside 2 internal candidates who had far greater knowledge of the organisation and I am certain that it was one of them who will have gained the position as the interview set up meant that they did not learn a single valuable thing about how any of the external candidates would perform in the position. They also took down all our numbers again despite already having all of our CVs and then said they would only maybe get in touch with a couple of us, ghosting anyone else who participated in the interview and not offering to give feedback. I would strongly advise the following for the interview process in the future:
- Interview internal candidates 1-1, you know who they are, you know they are strong candidates, give them the time and energy they deserve.
- if you are interviewing such a large group you need far more time to get to know each person and their experience, about 3-4 hours in an effective time.
- group interviews need to be set up in a way where every person gets the chance to speak in depth, set a small task to be prepared before the interview like a small presentation or demonstration, each person only spoke for a maximum of a minute or two at your interview, not enough time to make a valid professional opinion of someone's ability to do a job.
- In these kind of roles if you do have strong internal candidates who you know can do the job then hire from within! It is great for team morale and very ethical for the business to do so and saves external candidates time and energy as they are only applying for jobs they have a realistic chance of attaining.
Safe to say I would not be recommending any jobs interviews at Z-Arts that feature a group interview, if you see this in the description it's best to keep this in mind.