A recent controversy over iced coffee has taken over LinkedIn and TikTok. A TikTok recruiters’ advice informing applicants not to bring iced coffee to a job interview has gone viral. It has yielded a wide range of responses, including critiques about the advice and explanations of the reasoning behind the iced coffee standard. This is very reminiscent of the old discussion about salting food without tasting it during a job interview. Caitlin Wehnian, a recruiter, highlights the fact that it’s not about the coffee but impossibly perfect standards. We would agree with her, so let’s focus the discussion around criteria.
Job application processes are already so difficult that many job seekers responded poorly to this advice. Other commentators have noted that this controversy highlights generational differences around work and interview expectations. As professionals trained in the psychology of work, we saw something very different in this requirement—the misuse of criteria.
Criteria represent an “external measurement of some attribute or behavior against which to make some evaluation” (Jewell & Siegall, 1990). We use criteria in a variety of ways, whether it’s what sandwich to order (I’m in the mood for something spicy!) or what outfit to wear for the day (it’s sweater weather!). Criteria guide our decisions and the decision-making process. Ideally, hiring processes should also have criteria. When making a hiring decision, you should present a clear sense of what the job entails and what the candidate should be able to do in the job.
The main point of contention across many responses to this TikTok controversy is that someone is applying for a job, and they are being judged on something completely unrelated to the job, rather than existing job-related criteria, as one would hope and expect during an interview. As individuals who have worked in the talent acquisition (TA) space, we see this type of thinking often. Career coaches and recruiters often talk about application materials needing to be near perfect with zero errors and that a single error may result in a rejection. The responses to a question about typos in this Reddit thread indicates that some people believe it’s enough to reject a resume for a single typo. If everything that an applicant does in the application process (i.e. interviews, tests, personality assessments, projects, etc.) can be negated by a single extraneous event or object, then that is the ultimate sign the true criteria has nothing to do with the job itself.
We pose this question to you now, how does the presence or absence of iced coffee impact anyone except the person drinking it? Does it tell you anything about how the applicant would perform on the job? Does it help you or your organization make a better informed decision about who to hire? Does it immediately lead to a better hiring decision? It likely doesn’t lead to a better decision since the rule regarding not bringing an iced coffee to work reflects a social norm. According to UNICEF, social norms are the perceived informal, mostly unwritten, rules that define acceptable and appropriate actions within a given group or community, thus guiding human behavior. Take a close look at that definition, the key characteristics of social norms are that they are unwritten and informal. An applicant that enters your organization for an in-person interview will likely see many employees with an iced coffee, so bringing one to the interview won’t violate a social norm unless you’ve explicitly stated it. If the issue of bringing an iced coffee to an interview is deemed to be an important one by your organization, then it’s in your organization’s best interest to clearly communicate that to job applicants. The focus on iced coffee indicates a lack of knowledge or an intentional disinterest regarding what drives successful performance on the job. Selection tools’ sole focus should be allowing organizations to judge applicants’ abilities to meet the requirements of the job. Errant criteria, like whether an applicant brings an iced coffee, don’t help the organization and only impede good decision-making.
The iced coffee controversy is a good example of something referred to as the Horns effect (sometimes called the Halo effect), where one perceived bad quality leads to rejection. Rather than judging things clearly, we use a single experience or behavior to reject someone. The iced coffee has become a disqualifier or a criterion that is used to eliminate someone from the hiring process. Disqualifiers are often items like a certificate, education level, etc. but in this case, a social norm (aka an unwritten rule) has been used to disqualify a candidate. To avoid this kind of decision-making, it’s a good idea to use a rubric to help decision-makers combine all of the information that you have received about a candidate in your hiring process. You can also use algorithmic decision-making, where you and your team calculate the value of an applicants’ submitted materials and compare them across candidates.
If an organization is concerned about bias playing a role in the hiring process, unconscious bias training should be conducted prior to a hiring process. During this training, anyone conducting interviews should be given a list of things that recruiters and hiring managers should avoid doing in the interview process such as a list of cognitive biases with examples. Hiring managers and recruiters need to be trained on proper interview techniques and evaluation so that hiring standards remain consistent.
Many recruiters and hiring managers complain that they have too many candidates and do not have time to assess each one completely. Even if there are too many candidates for a particular position, it’s best to base one’s decision on something job-relevant, rather than an iced coffee. From a more global perspective, a bad hire will eventually fail, and you’ll be back attempting to hire their replacement. It’s best to focus on selecting the best candidate amongst those you have available. In a job market with so many potentially qualified applicants, it’s in an organization’s best interest to identify the best talent. To get the most out of the TA process, have staff trained on appropriate behavior during the hiring process and ask that they focus on clear, job-relevant criteria that they evaluate using a scoring rubric.
