Tag: workplace

Iced Coffee and Other Disqualifiers

Reason for rejection: iced coffee.

Recently, a recruiter posted on social media that young candidates were showing up to interviews with iced coffee and that it was disrespectful to their potential employers. That indicated a casual tone, like the whole interview was just one more errand to run that day.

I wouldn’t judge if a candidate showed up with an iced coffee. Unless they showed up late mumbling something about “traffic” while swirling their iced latte.

A friend recently sent me her schedule for an in-person interview. She was supposed to meet with six people over the span of four hours. At that point, you almost need iced coffee for sustenance during a marathon interview session.

Iced coffee aside, what bothers me about the whole conversation is that it is just one more obstacle that job seekers need to overcome while looking for work.

It is no longer enough to look polished and professional, have a strong resume, and know how to answer key interview questions. You also need to know individual biases and company-specific cultural expectations before walking through the door.

I once worked at a place where we hired two people for the same job, back-to-back. They both had the same name, and neither one worked out. One actually left the company in spectacular fashion, but that’s a story for another post.

So when it came time to fill the position for the third time, you better believe that resumes with that name were immediately disqualified.

My boss would simply say: “not again.”

Some of those candidates had very good resumes, yet they were rejected for having the wrong name at the wrong time.

I’ve seen candidates dismissed for being unemployed three months after a layoff. For being too excited about the company. For touching their hair too much during the interview.

None of these things reveal anything about whether a candidate can or can’t perform the work, yet these biases persist.

I was once looking through resumes with my boss. We were adding one more member to the team. I pointed at an interesting candidate, and she quickly set it aside by saying: “I would never hire someone with a two-page resume.”

I was surprised because I had a two-page resume, and she had hired me.

I told her and she didn’t believe me. I had to dig a copy of my old resume from my files to prove it to her.

Job seekers are told to prepare, yet how can you prepare for biases that are arbitrary, inconsistent, and only sometimes enforced? The rules of interviewing are not even rules anymore. They are preferences that change depending on who is sitting across the table or on the other side of the Zoom.

Somewhere behind the wrong name and the two-page resume, there might be the right person for the job. Everything else is just iced coffee.

Impossible Questions

I knew better, but I did it anyway. I clicked on a clickbait article about hiring red flags.

Some of the advice was basic. Never hire someone who badmouths their former employer. Never hire someone who asks no questions. Never hire someone who doesn’t show curiosity about the company or the role. Fair enough.

But there was one that didn’t sit well with me. The author argued that you should never hire someone who can’t answer the question: “Tell me about your biggest failure.”

The argument was that someone who couldn’t answer this question didn’t have enough self-awareness to be a good performer.

I disagree.

Not because this is untrue, but because this is what I call an impossible question.

If you answer truthfully, you are highlighting your shortcomings to the hiring manager. And you don’t know what that manager considers a disqualifier. You try something relatively safe, only to find out you’re sitting across from someone who sees that particular issue as unforgivable.

If on the other hand you try to be strategic and answer with a non-answer, or a strength disguised as a weakness, you look disingenuous. Your application moves to the rejection pile.

Heads you lose, tails you also lose.

People know what their biggest failures are. They probably lie awake at night reliving every moment. They just won’t tell you. It’s not a lack of self-awareness. It’s self-preservation.

“What is your biggest weakness” is another question in this category. It gets asked less and less these days because people have realized it doesn’t tell you anything about a candidate’s ability; other than their storytelling and spin abilities.

By asking impossible questions, interviewers aren’t being clever or fishing for red flags. They are setting people up for failure.

And the interview process doesn’t need more help at being terrible. It’s already broken and getting worse by the minute, with algorithms removing qualified candidates automatically and recruiters who can’t be bothered to close the loop after taking up someone’s time for weeks.

As interviewers, we can do better. Ask what the candidate has built. Ask how they think through problems. Ask what they would do in the first 90 days. Those questions tell you something real.

Or better yet, ask them to ask you questions. See how they think and what they care about. That will tell you more in five minutes than any rehearsed failure story ever will.