A hunt group is basically two or more individual phone lines tied together so that a call that rings to the first line, rolls over to the second line in that group, if the first line is busy. If the second line is busy it rolls over to the third line and so on. Yes, it does work exactly the same way over-lines, for callers who are calling in.
There is no difference.
If the first line is busy it rings the second and so on. In a hunt group, each line has its own individual phone number and all lines are manually programmed to forward a call to the next line when busy.
Its like programming your home line to forward to your cell phone, but you are only forwarding calls only when your home line is busy. That means you can get two calls answered when someone calls your home phone.
And you can continue this by forwarding your cellphone to your office phone, when busy. So now you can get three calls getting answered when someone calls your home phone number.
Of course, this is just to explain how hunting works, and if you try this on with your home phone line it may or may not work depending upon your home telephone service provider.
In case of business lines in a hunt group, this is exactly what happens. You get a bunch of lines all having their individual phone number and programming to forward when busy.
The problem with this is that when you call out, the outgoing call display will show the caller ID of the line you are calling out on.
So unless you use your first line or your pilot line to call out, called parties will not see your main number on their call display. In effect you will actually be seen as having lots of phone lines each with different numbers. This may not be what you want.
Think about when you want to downsize the number of lines, or move offices..there are a bunch of numbers you will have to deal with, that all your customers have been dialing in on.
( Yes, often customers tend to save the numbers that show up on call display and use that to reach you.)