Group Discussions... Is something actually ‘discussed’?

Group Discussions (GDs) are being increasingly used as a tool to evaluate a candidate’s ability to communicate in a group. GDs are used by corporate looking to recruit candidates from campuses. GDs are also used to check the candidate’s ability by B Schools during their admissions process also. There are still lots of various instances where GDs are conducted. In a GD, members are supposed to discuss on a topic. Sometimes, the panel expects a conclusion from the group, whereas sometimes it’s the discussion that is more important.

But having watched and having been a part of a substantial number of GDs of late, I have an important observation. In most of the GDs, the focus is on talking as much as possible. More than anything, the members want to hog limelight and make sure they have spoken something. Rather than actually discussing anything, people go on adding points, irrespective of that fact whether it is adding any value to the discussion at all. Nobody actually even cares to bother if the discussion is heading somewhere.

Ideally, whenever a point is raised, the group is expected to discuss on that point from various perspectives before going to some other point. But what generally happens is one member raises a point and another member raises a totally different point. Though both may be relevant to the topic being discussed, the discussion as such is not at all happening. And many a times, when the discussion has to be concluded, rather than getting into the gist of the discussion and concluding on it, what happens is every member starts contributing his own ideas to the group.

A big reason for this is most of the GDs are not elimination rounds. In the sense that, immediately after the GD, candidates are not eliminated before the next process. As a result, the expected aggression is not seen to be on top. Also, this gives the candidates a breathing space as to nothing is going to happen even if your performance is not exceptional in the GD. You can always showcase your talent and demonstrate your case in the succeeding rounds of evaluation. An elimination round would require you to be in the top, or rather not be in the bottom. But in a GD which is non-eliminating, you can walk out free even by underperforming. As a result, the required quality in the discussions doesn’t generally exist.

What I fail to understand is the actual motive behind a GD. The GDs are in fact no way close to the discussions that happen in organizations over issues and anything for that matter. These discussions are generally structured and in a way the focus is on adding value to a point raised by others in the team and concluding it logically before moving on to another point. But the GDs, (at least those that I have watched and have been a part of) of late, fail to actually do that. They actually fail to test the group dynamics and how people actually discuss. Partly to be blamed is the time constraint on the discussion, which makes it impossible to discuss as happens in the industry. GDs generally are 30-40 minutes long to the maximum. But discussions in the industry actually go far longer than these and sometimes, run up to late in the nights, when the matter is critical.

So I personally feel that GDs don’t add any value in terms of analyzing how good a candidate is in communicating and team work, because the team work simply doesn’t exist. The discussion doesn’t happen at all.