Hiring Manager Goes Viral For Escape Rooms as Job Interviews

Would you apply for a job that had job candidates compete in an escape room instead of a traditional interview?

A LinkedIn post from a hiring manager named Alex Cohen has gone viral after he suggested the outlandish procedure.

"At our new company, we have stopped conducting traditional interviews for new candidates," he began. "Instead, we put eight candidates at a time in an escape room and observe how they problem-solve among strangers to escape. The entire time, I’m watching every move and listening to every word from a control room. I evaluate them using a criteria matrix I paid McKinsey to develop that assesses their ability to solve problems, lead, make decisions, avoid red herrings, and communicate."

Cohen added that for those candidates that successfully escape, the "useless half" will be instantly eliminated from the interview process. And if nobody escapes? There are no candidates.

"So far it’s been working great and we’ve managed to hire only 10x engineers. Follow me for more hiring advice," he concluded.

Some believed that Cohen was being serious about the practice. However, he left a few hints that he was being sarcastic. McKinsey is in reference to the consulting firm that has previously gone viral for major corporations hiring them to create PowerPoints of unhelpful information. The "10x engineers" line was in reference to the historic joke about the unheard of engineers who are 10 times more productive than your typical engineer.