@chai2,
When a person has worked for one entity for 25 years, longer than anyone who interviewed her when she sought a slight promotion, to be interviewed by six people is ridiculous.
She did not expect to be given the job outright and she recognized that a candidate with superior abilities could be among the applicants. But to spend an hour with a person who had been in a very similar post for a quarter of a century?
She was close to quitting over the interview.
I had developed a circle of women friends who were serious job hunters. Some were the women I knew in grad school and some were from the community. i have lost track of all them, but, at its peak, I was keeping in touch with 48 women job seekers. At the end of the 90s, this panel method of interviewing seems to have developed that, in the long run, serves no purpose. It is time wasting and tension creating.
The jobs just weren't that earth moving!
About a year ago, the girlfriend of a co-worker who had just finished her MS in biochemistry came into the store in tears. She had just come from a job interview. I did not ask them what the story was but no one should be reduced to tears because of an interview.