Sentence:  At the end of work one day , the personnel man took the applicants one at a time , asked them to sit behind the receptionist 's desk and he then played the role of a number of <WSD>people</WSD> who might come to the receptionist with a number of queries and for a number of purposes . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively