The Interview Tell That Shouldn't Be One

Two candidates, identical qualifications. One walks in with a bottle of water, the other with an iced coffee. Does it matter? A recruiting video argued that it does: discussing Gen Z candidates, an American recruiter said arriving with an iced coffee can read as too casual, as if the interview were just one more errand. The response split between wholehearted agreement and charges that the advice is outdated and arbitrary.

The etiquette debate misses the more interesting question. Plenty of reactions to interview coffee are practical — nobody wants a spilled latte on the boardroom table, and slurping or rattling ice during a handshake is genuinely distracting. But once you move past the mess and the noise, what is left is a snap judgment about a person. And as the piece puts it, the real question is why something so trivial influences how we judge a candidate at all — and whether those judgments help employers spot people who will actually do the job well.