Forget the iced coffee: what hiring managers should really be judging

Iced coffee in job interviews is a debate that has divided social media after a recruiter's TikTok video says it makes it hard to take candidates seriously. 

Caitlin Wehnianen, a Florida-based corporate recruiter behind the viral clip, says bringing an iced coffee to an interview makes candidates look "too casual." 

"It looks like you went to Target, then you went to Starbucks, now you're stopping by your interview, then you're on to the next thing," she says in the video. 

Wehnianen, who says she has more than a decade of experience in recruiting, has since clarified to CTV that her point isn't to suggest candidates shouldn't get jobs if they bring a cold drink but that it could be a distraction and make a not-so-great first impression. 

While the internet is divided on whether it's appropriate, Nicolas Roulin, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, says the real conversation should be about what hiring managers should evaluate during job interviews. 

"For most jobs, whether someone drinks iced coffee has no relevance whatsoever to their capacity to perform," he says. "So, if you don't find it professional to bring one to an interview, fine — but is that really the most important element you should be evaluating?" 

The red flags that actually matter 

So, what should employers be watching for when conducting interviews? 

Other than the main issues that  any hiring manager would be watching out for, such as preparedness or arriving late, — Roulin says it's hard to determine what counts as a red flag, because it depends on the organization. 

He points to the way a candidate dresses for an interview as an example — someone interviewing at a bank would have different expectations around presentation versus a software developer who doesn't interact with customers. 

"The iced coffee follows the same logic. Would it be a problem to bring one to a team meeting at that job? If people would find it odd or problematic, then you probably should avoid doing that in the interview — because you're signalling what you'd do on the job," he adds. 

What a structured interview actually looks like 

Roulin says hiring managers who want to evaluate candidates more effectively need to start with a properly structured interview — and there are really only two stages. 

The first is simply about "setting the stage" — walking candidates through the interview process and making them comfortable and ready. 

The second is where the actual structured interview begins. "You  prepare a set of questions ahead of time, designed to assess specific qualifications relevant to the job you're hiring for. Those questions should be asked in the same way to every candidate for that position, and you should follow the same process throughout. If you plan to ask follow-up questions, do so consistently across all applicants," he says. 

Throughout the interview, hiring managers should also be keeping track of the quality of responses through a rubric such as Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS), to help score and evaluate responses more objectively, Roulin says. 

Teams can design a BARS rubric by building interview questions around specific competencies — such as teamwork, problem-solving, and communication — and anchoring the scoring to real examples of strong and weak performance in that role. 

The scores should be developed by consulting people who know the job well — such as managers and senior team members — and asking what a great answer looks like versus a poor one. Those responses become anchors, he says. 

Scoring for fairness, not just consistency 

The value of BARS goes beyond standard practice — it is also a practical tool available for reducing bias during the interview process, Roulin says. 

"To give someone a lower score, it needs to be justified by the quality of their response relative to the anchors — not because you don't like people who have blue eyes or wear hats. That makes it considerably more objective compared to a broader impression — 'On a scale of one to 10, how good is that applicant?' — where personal biases can easily enter and skew decisions," he says. 

Another good practice Roulin recommends  is having more than one interviewer use the same rubric. 

"If someone's scores are significantly higher or lower than the others', that's worth examining. It could indicate bias based on age, gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, or other factors. At minimum, it creates a mechanism to identify and address the problem," he adds. 

A study published by Yale University in 2019 found that hiring managers can make judgments about a candidate's social class within seconds of hearing them speak, and those judgments can influence how competent they perceive the candidate to be. 

Stop asking bad questions 

Structure and scoring tools, however, only work if the questions being asked are worth asking. Poor interviews come from hiring teams relying on questions that don't evaluate anything meaningful, Roulin says. 

"There are also questions that seem standard but are effectively meaningless: 'What are your strengths? What are your biggest weaknesses?' Applicants expect those and have prepared answers ready. They're also rarely connected to the actual requirements of the job," he says. 

That also includes so-called trick questions — such as asking candidates which superhero they'd be, or where they see themselves in five years. Those questions, Roulin says, are mostly designed to "unsettle or destabilize candidates" and don't assess anything useful. 

"The same applies to other tactics meant to rattle candidates: arriving late on purpose, staging interruptions, or abruptly shifting the interview mid-way to see how someone handles pressure. In practice, they rarely work — and they create a bad impression on applicants, which matters," he says. 

Candidates are evaluating you, too 

What hiring managers sometimes forget is that the interview runs both ways, Roulin says, as candidates are sizing up the organization too — and how they're treated matters. 

"If you dismiss someone because they brought a nice coffee to the interview, that may have been the most talented candidate you'll see in the next 12 months — and you've passed on them because of a cup of iced coffee. Is it worth it?," he says.