The typical job interview runs about 45 minutes. Iñaki Ereño, CEO of the healthcare giant Bupa, considers that nowhere near enough time to judge whether someone is actually worth hiring—so he puts candidates through six hours of tests spread across three separate meetings instead, including a restaurant sit-down where he is watching whether you will order wine.

"I tend not to like people that don't have any initiative," Ereño told 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 said he would prefer a candidate who walks into the lunch interview, sees his glass of water, and orders wine anyway.

"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 said, adding that he is specifically testing how confident you are. That kind of energy, in his view, 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 precisely that—a display of bold initiative.

One part of his 'secret weapon' test: three meetings, two hours each

Ereño runs one of Europe's largest healthcare companies. Bupa reported £18.2 billion ($24.5 billion) in revenue in 2025, a giant spanning 190 countries and employing more than 100,000 people. The group—short for British United Provident Association—was founded in Britain in 1946 and has no shareholders, ploughing its profits back into businesses spanning insurance, clinics, dental care and care homes. Getting a senior hire wrong at that scale is expensive—something he has learned the hard way. It is also a cost workforce researchers have tried to quantify: Gallup has estimated that replacing an employee can set an employer back between one-half and two times that employee's annual salary, a bill that only climbs with seniority. 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 said. "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 meeting is a classic two-hour deep dive into the CV. The second moves to a restaurant for breakfast or lunch—and that is where the real assessment begins. And it is not just the drink order he is looking at.

"How you treat the waiter, for me, is an obsession," Ereño said. "I want to see how nice you are. You need to be respectful."

He is also watching body language and confidence—how you hold yourself once the formal setting drops away.

The third meeting returns to the office, where the questions become more personal.

"And then there is another two hours after that," he added. "Asking about your life: What do you like? What do you see in our company? What are you expecting from Bupa? All of those questions."

From Steve Jobs to Steven Bartlett, he's not the only CEO with an unusual test

Ereño is far from the only chief executive who thinks the restaurant table reveals more about a future hire than a cold interview room.

Khozema Shipchandler, CEO of $31 billion Twilio, the cloud-communications platform, interviews senior candidates specifically over 45-minute dinners. He watches how they carry themselves off the clock while also listening for one word in particular: say "I" too much and it signals you are not a team player. Shipchandler also sets aside around 20 minutes for the interviewee to ask their own questions. If they have nothing up their sleeve? "That's a pretty big red flag."

Other CEOs have their own litmus tests. One won't hire anyone who salts their food before tasting it. Another secretly asks the server to mess up the candidate's order mid-meal just to see how they react.

Ereño's marathon process is the most elaborate in a genre of chief executives who bet that more time and less formality reveals more. Hiring researchers have examined that assumption for decades, and meta-analyses in industrial-organizational psychology have repeatedly found that unstructured interviews are weaker predictors of future job performance than structured, skills-based assessments—a body of evidence that sits in tension with the faith many bosses place in a dinner-table gut call.

Apple's Steve Jobs had a "beer test." But instead of actually conducting the interview in a restaurant or bar, he would take candidates on an informal walk-and-talk to find out what they were like off-duty. He would then ask himself: "Would I have a beer with this person? Would I talk to him or her in a relaxed way while taking a walk?" If the answer was no, they weren't hired.

And even if you are not meeting a potential boss in a restaurant surrounded by waiters, it still pays to be nice to the staff you encounter on your way to your interview—wherever it is. Steven Bartlett, founder of Diary of a CEO, hired someone with "zero" experience because she thanked the security guard by name on her way into the building. Six months later, he called her one of the best hires he had ever made.

With the playbook now public, candidates heading into a meal with a chief executive should assume the wine list, the waiter and the clock may all be part of the test.

Are you a CEO with an unusual hiring test? Fortune wants to hear from you: Orianna.Royle@fortune.com

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on July 3, 2026.