Posted on 08/07/2023 7:26:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Job interviews can be nerve-racking as many interviewees stress over how to best answer questions the employer throws at you.
But, not every company asks tough questions. One boss revealed the “coffee cup” test he uses in job interviews to determine whether an applicant is right for the role.
Former managing director for Xero Australia Trent Innes explained how he refuses to hire anyone if they fail to return an empty cup to the kitchen at the end of an interview.
“I will always take you for a walk down to one of our kitchens and somehow you always end up walking away with a drink,” Innes said in a resurfaced 2019 interview with the podcast “The Ventures”.
“Then we take the drink back, have our interview, and one of the things I’m always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I know several people who have a job interacting with the public and when they are on they are on. When they are not they will be polite but distant because being on is a major energy drain and they need to apply it to the job.
If you leave your damn cup for someone else to clean up, it shows laziness, entitlement, and lack of self awareness. I think it’s a great way to thin the herd.
I guess it’s an attempt at an objective assessment of character and attention to detail.
Do you ask what you should do with the cup? Do you offer to take any other empty cups back? Do you remember where the kitchen is? Do you eash the cup or just set it in the sink? Do you interact with any other employees while returning the cup? Do you thank your interviewers for their hospitality?
A measure of how much you will “own” and see through even the smallest of tasks.
Generally, I don’t like gimmicks in interviews. Such as the famous “do you absent-mindedly salt your meals” Ford or some famous industry captain used as their own weird benchmark for suitability. In my experience on both sides of the table, a surprising number of interviewers are looking for their next office friend/partisan. (Which is worse.)
I once went through an interview that was sort of a “good cop/bad cop” routine. It occurred to me later that my demeanor and responses should have been equanimous to both.
As “gimmcks” go, the “coffee cup test isn’t bad: a gentle test of how comfortable you are with the interview and how clear-headed/concientious you are under interview-stress. A decider between two equally strong candidates? Okay. But if it’s one of those hard lines that determine a candidate’s fate for any further consideration, I don’t think it’s a good one.
>>I never accepted coffee, tea, or anything during business. If they gave it to me anyway, I didn’t drink it. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I owed them something.
Just like Joe Friday and Romero.
i’ve been on many interviews over the years.
except for interviews where they take you for lunch or dinner in the middle... i’ve never had a drink offered.
i don’t drink coffee (jittery) and i wouldn’t want soda (might burp)... so i’d go with bottled water, if anything. and in that case, i’d take the bottle with me unless finished (then i’d crush it and toss it).
If Innes is interviewing for housekeeping in his company; then yeah. It would be expected that they pick up/clean up.
If he is interviewing a top level executive; then it would be a mistake for that individual to assume a subservient role.
I would not want nor expect my possible Senior VP of Marketing to focus on making sure a coffee cup is returned to the kitchen.
That’s what housekeeping is for.
I wouldn’t accept any drink. Then what, I fail the test because I didn’t take the test?
Successfully?
What is moronic is compressing an employment decision to a single question.
Well played. That said, if things had already gone so well that you were able to make that response, you were already in.
Morons. That is why we have janitors. Next.
I was once interviewed by a company where the very attractive interviewer had a very large amount of cleavage showing on her top.
I was annoyed by feeling I had to divert my eyes so much so…I finally asked if this were some kind of homo or sexual harassment test while pointing at it…
I did not get the job…not sure if that was why.
This is smart. No one is immune to the law of reciprocity.
This boss has too much time on his hands if he’s thinking up these mind games.
This test would have a high number of false negatives.
I’m with a number of other FReepers here, I wouldn’t accept the offer of a drink in the first place.
And the offer of a drink or food in an interview would take points off of my opinion of the employer.
They might think they’re the only one doing an evaluation but they’d be wrong. :)
LOL
That is true.
Walked out of one interview and called my recruiter and told him that I was not interested in working for the company.
He asked me why and I told him they were not following basic safety regs. I am not talking about the "fill out the paperwork" bs but the actual stuff that keeps you from losing life, limb or eyesight. Few months later the place had what you might term an industrial incident.
Yep
Maybe Twitter took their X and now they are Xero.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.