$25 billion CEO says one-hour interviews are a waste of time—he puts candidates through six hours of tests and wants them to order wine at lunch

Most job interviews last around 45 minutes. Bupa CEO Iñaki Ereño thinks that’s nowhere near enough time to know if someone is actually worth hiring—so he puts candidates through six hours of tests across three separate meetings instead, including a restaurant sit-down where he’s watching whether you’ll order wine. “I tend not to like people that don’t have any initiative,” Ereño tells Fortune. “Imagine if my drink is a glass of water. I’m very happy with someone who says, ‘Do you mind if I have a glass of wine?’” In fact, the Fortune 500 Europe boss says he’d prefer that to a candidate walking into the lunch interview, seeing his glass of water and ordering the same. “I don’t like followers, ‘oh I will have a glass of water as well, I don’t want wine.’ These sorts of things are very important,” Ereño says, adding that he is specifically testing how confident you are. That kind of energy is exactly what separates leaders from the crowd. “Be more proactive, less passive. Take some risks, take initiatives,” is Ereño’s advice on making it to the top. And ordering wine even when the boss hasn’t is exactly that—showing bold initiative. It’s just one part of his ‘secret weapon’ test: three meetings, two hours each Ereño runs one of Europe’s largest healthcare companies: Bupa, which reported £18.2 billion ($24.5 billion) in revenue in 2025, a giant spanning 190 countries and employing over 100,000 people. Getting a senior hire wrong at that scale is expensive—something he’s learned the hard way. Now, watching your drinks order is just one of his tests. “When I was doing an interview of just one hour, that was not enough,” he says. “I reduced my level of mistakes when hiring people by setting up a system that is based on three meetings, two hours each. That’s my secret weapon.” The first is a classic two-hour deep dive into the CV. The second moves to a restaurant for breakfast or lunch—and t