When Hiring Harms: How multi-panel interviews undermine neuro-safety, authenticity and real inclusion

By Rose Byass

For all our talk about inclusion, psychological safety, diversity and culture, one of the most human moments in the entire employment lifecycle remains profoundly unsafe: the interview. More specifically, the multi-panel interview—a practice so deeply entrenched that few people ever question it, despite the fact that neuroscience, organisational psychology, and lived human experience all tell us it is counterproductive. Leaders claim they want authenticity, diversity of thought, emotional intelligence and high-performing teams. Yet they continue to rely on an assessment method that neurologically shuts people down, distorts performance, and rewards a very narrow set of communication styles and nervous system responses. This is not a talent problem.

It is a system design problem. And until leaders understand the neuroscience beneath these moments, hiring will continue to harm the very people we say we want.

The Brain Interprets Panel Interviews as Threat

When a person walks into a room to face multiple interviewers—three, five, sometimes seven—their nervous system responds before they have said a word. Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten has shown that under stress, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, memory retrieval, emotional regulation and articulate expression—begins to shut down. The amygdala steps in. The body prepares for danger. This reaction is not a flaw.

It is protective neurobiology. Now add several people watching, judging, evaluating and taking notes. Research by Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman shows that social evaluation activates the same neural alarm system as physical pain. A panel interview multiplies that threat. The result?

• thought processing becomes jumbled
• verbal recall weakens
• communication tightens
• authenticity shrinks
• personality flattens
• the nervous system takes over

What leaders often judge as “not confident”, “not articulate” or “not leadership material” is more accurately described as a normal human threat response happening in real time. It is not a measure of capability.

It is a measure of neuro-safety—or the lack of it.

We Don’t Evaluate Talent in Multi-Panel Interviews. We Evaluate Threat Tolerance.

This distinction is crucial. Multi-panel interviews are not measuring:

• emotional intelligence
• reflective capacity
• leadership potential
• ethical decision-making
• cultural intelligence
• team fit
• values alignment

They are measuring:

• whose prefrontal cortex holds out longest
• who masks stress most convincingly
• who performs under scrutiny
• who has the communication style the panel prefers
• who fits the dominant culture

This is why organisations so often miss extraordinary people—deep thinkers, introverts, neurodivergent individuals, trauma survivors, culturally diverse communicators, ethical disruptors, and those who excel in calm environments but not under spotlight. Panels don’t just disadvantage these individuals; they systematically filter them out. And leaders then wonder why their teams lack diversity of thought, warmth, depth, ethical courage, and emotional range.

Fake Psychological Safety: When Culture Is a Box-Tick, Not a Behaviour

Many organisations promote psychological safety as a value. They publish frameworks. They train managers. They build it into leadership models. Yet psychological safety—defined by Amy Edmondson as the felt permission for interpersonal risk-taking—is absent in most hiring processes. A multi-panel interview tells candidates:

• “Perform, or lose the opportunity.”
• “There is a right answer.”
• “Don't show too much personality.”
• “Don’t say the wrong thing.”
• “Don’t challenge power.”

This is not psychological safety.

It is performance safety—a superficial, sanitised version that looks progressive on paper but feels unsafe in practice. When organisations demand authenticity in their values but punish authenticity in their systems, they cultivate fake psychological safety—language without embodiment. Hiring is often where this contradiction is most visible.

The Hidden Flaw in Diversity Culture: It Includes Only the “Acceptable” Forms of Difference

Let’s be honest. Most diversity programmes focus on demographic diversity—gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age. These matter deeply. They are essential and non-negotiable.  But diversity culture often forgets:

• neurodiversity
• trauma backgrounds
• introversion
• cultural communication differences
• emotional style diversity
• socioeconomic background
• different thinking speeds
• sensory needs
• anxiety responses
• leadership pacing differences

This is where “diversity” becomes unintentionally exclusionary. If the systems only support people who can:

• perform confidence
• think fast under pressure
• speak in Western communication patterns
• self-promote
• sell themselves
• mask distress
• tolerate scrutiny

…then the organisation isn’t inclusive.

It has simply selected a new dominant group and labelled it “diverse. ”And multi-panel interviews are one of the strongest mechanisms reinforcing this narrow version of inclusion. Real diversity is not a metric.

It is a felt sense of belonging across nervous systems, not only identities.

Bad Questions Create Bad Insight

Interview questions often worsen the neuro-threat state.

1. Behavioural questions under pressure backfire

Neuroscience shows memory retrieval collapses under stress.

When candidates struggle to recall a story, they get judged—not the system.

2. Hypotheticals force people to guess the culture

“What would you do if…?”

Without context, candidates perform optimism, not truth.

3. Broad questions overwhelm the nervous system

“Tell me about yourself.”

The dysregulated brain cannot summarise identity while being scrutinised.

4. Trick questions offer no insight

They simply increase anxiety and reduce clarity.

Research by Roy Baumeister shows performance drops under such evaluative stress.

5. Narrow competency questions flatten human depth

They reduce leadership to checklists. Together, these question types make it nearly impossible for a candidate’s personality, nuance, or humanity to shine through.

When Interviewers Create Threat Without Realising It

Panel interviews often suffer from:

• misaligned interviewers
• vague phrasing
• multi-part questions
• rapid-fire delivery
• inconsistency in tone and expectations
• cultural assumptions
• unconscious bias
• lack of atunement

This is all deeply neuro-unsafe. Moy & Lam’s research on interview stress highlights that ambiguous questions and multi-rater evaluation significantly reduce candidate accuracy—not intelligence. When leaders misinterpret threat responses as incompetence, the hiring process becomes not just inefficient—but unjust.

The Loss: Who Organisations Fail to Hire

The people who suffer under these systems are often the ones organisations most desperately need:

• reflective leaders
• values-driven decision-makers
• ethical challengers
• culturally attuned thinkers
• neurodivergent innovators
• trauma-informed communicators
• deep listeners
• high-empathy contributors
• introverted strategists

These individuals often excel in stability, clarity, fairness and relational environments.But panels reward:

• speed
• confidence
• charisma
• performance
• conformity
• cultural similarity
• emotional suppression

The misalignment is enormous. This is why Schmidt & Hunter’s landmark research shows interviews—especially unstructured or panel-based—are among the weakest predictors of job performance. We keep selecting the wrong qualities.

We keep losing the right people.

If Leaders Want Real Psychological Safety, They Must Start With Hiring

Neuro-safety is the foundation of all healthy leadership and culture. If the first interaction with an organisation is threatening, scripted, rigid and performative, the message is already clear:“ This is who we are. ”Leaders must redesign hiring processes to reflect the culture they claim to value. A neuro-safe interview process:

• uses smaller, relational conversations
• offers multiple ways to demonstrate capability (written, discussion, case-based, reflective)
• is attuned, paced and predictable
• includes interviewers trained in neuro-safety and trauma-aware communication
• evaluates values, reasoning and potential—not performance under pressure
• welcomes diverse minds, not just diverse identities

This is not about making interviews “easier.”

It is about making them accurate, humane and aligned with genuine inclusion.

Conclusion: Multi-Panel Interviews Are a Leadership Problem, Not an HR Procedure

When a hiring system:

• activates threat
• suppresses authenticity
• disadvantages neurodivergence
• filters out deep thinkers
• rewards performance over truth
• contradicts psychological safety
• perpetuates superficial diversity
• reinforces cultural conformity

…it is no longer a neutral process. It is a leadership decision. Multi-panel interviews do not identify leaders.

They identify survivors of stress. If organisations want workplaces where people think clearly, challenge safely, lead bravely and collaborate meaningfully, they must create hiring systems that honour the human nervous system—not fight it. Real inclusion begins at the first point of contact.

Real psychological safety begins before day one.

Real leadership begins with the courage to change what no longer serves.