Confidential · Recruitment Division · 2–20 players

Promotion™
The Interview Game

Two teams. One Head of Recruitment who answers to nobody. A stack of interviews that were never going to go to plan. Talk your way into the job, or watch your team lose it for you.

5–20 players45–70 minutesAges 14+460+ cardsNo writing

The premise

One interviewer. For the whole game.

The Permanent Interviewer

One player is Head of Recruitment from first vacancy to final hire. They are on no team, they win nothing, and they control everything: the questions, the timing and every event card played. It is the most powerful seat at the table and the only one that never gets judged.

Two rival teams

Teams split evenly and stay fixed. Every round each side nominates its strongest candidate for the vacancy on the table — which means deciding, out loud, who among you is least likely to embarrass everyone.

A fair fight, ruined

Both candidates face identical questions and an identical number of event cards. The interviews are symmetrical. The disasters are not.

Structure

A round of Promotion™

01
Post the Vacancy
The Interviewer draws a Vacancy Card and reads the role, salary and one absurd requirement. Nobody is qualified. That is the point.
02
Select Candidates
Each team secretly nominates one candidate. A player cannot be nominated twice until everyone on the team has interviewed.
03
Interview One
The Interviewer asks the three questions printed on the Vacancy Card, and plays event cards between answers.
04
Interview Two
Identical questions. The second candidate faces the same number of event cards — different cards, same pressure.
05
The Decision
The Interviewer alone decides who gets the job. No vote, no discussion. They announce the hire and, if they wish, the reason.
06
Promotion Token
The winning team takes a token. Three tokens for a short game, five for a full one. First to the target becomes the executive board.

The decks

Five ways an interview falls apart

460+ unique cards at launch. Event cards are never read for the joke — they are read to create a problem the candidate must solve in character, immediately.

Scandal Cards

120 cards · PERSONNEL FILE

A documented incident from the candidate's past, revealed mid-answer. The candidate must not deny it — they must justify it.

Records show you once billed the company for a jet ski. You described it as “essential transport”.
You were removed from a client dinner. The client sent flowers to apologise to the restaurant.
Your last team formed a support group. It still meets weekly.
You have been banned from the office kitchen by written policy. The policy is named after you.

Reference Check Cards

90 cards · CALL PATCHED THROUGH

A named player joins the interview live as a former employer, colleague or customer. They answer the Interviewer honestly — in character.

Former manager who was promoted because of this candidate's mistake.
A customer who still receives the candidate's personal emails.
The colleague who covered for them for four years and has stopped pretending.
Someone who genuinely loves them and cannot explain why.

Ethics Cards

80 cards · COMPLIANCE REVIEW

A dilemma with no clean answer. Choosing nothing counts as an answer, and it is always the worst one.

You can save fifty jobs by firing the one person everybody likes. Announce it now.
The product works. The safety report does not. Launch is Friday.
Your best performer is stealing from a competitor. On your behalf.
You must choose: keep your bonus or keep your assistant.

Crisis Cards

70 cards · SITUATION LIVE

Chaos begins and the interview does not stop. The candidate handles both at once, or loses the room.

A fire drill starts. You must keep interviewing while evacuating.
You are on speakerphone to the entire company by accident.
The building loses power. Continue in the dark, confidently.
A rival candidate walks in and sits down. Nobody asks them to leave.

Curveball Cards

100 cards · CONSTRAINT ISSUED

The rules of answering change instantly. Constraints stack. Breaking one hands the room to the opposition.

Every answer must include a number, and every number must be a lie.
You may no longer use the word “team”.
You must answer only in questions until told otherwise.
You must compliment the person who most recently insulted you.

Vacancy deck

120 roles nobody should be given

Head of MoraleInterim CEO (Three Days)Chief of ApologiesDirector of Unspecified StrategyNight Manager, Floor 9Head of Difficult ConversationsSenior Vice President of NothingCorporate Mascot

Each Vacancy Card carries a title, a salary, one impossible requirement and the three questions both candidates must answer. Same questions, both interviews — the deck guarantees fairness so the Interviewer can spend their attention on chaos.

Design rules

Elegance under the mess

Stay in character or lose the room

Breaking character, refusing to answer, or ignoring an active Curveball constraint costs the candidate a Composure marker. Lose all three and the opposing team wins the round outright, no decision needed.

Interviewer discipline

A maximum of four event cards per interview, and never two in the same answer. Pressure works because there is room to breathe between disasters.

Everyone plays, always

Non-candidates are references and crisis participants. The rotation rule means every player interviews before anybody interviews twice.

The Interviewer decides

One person hires. No vote, no committee. Candidates play to the Interviewer, and the Interviewer hires who they would genuinely employ.

Roadmap

Expansion potential

Promotion™: Restructure

Redundancy rounds, hostile takeovers and the Exit Interview mini-game where losing candidates get one final speech.

Promotion™: Night Shift

Hospitality, retail and emergency roles. Faster interviews, louder crises, no HR department at all.

Promotion™: The Board

Executive-tier vacancies with shareholder pressure cards and two simultaneous interviewers who disagree.