“The Interview Test: Employer’s Unconventional ‘Coffee Cup’ Assessment for Potential Employees”

A CEO has revealed a test he uses in interviews to see if candidates are up for the job  – and it has nothing to do with their CV.

Trent Innes, the former head of Xero Australia, shared a unique approach to vetting job candidates during interviews. He would evaluate potential hires by inviting them for a cup of coffee while discussing the role.

In a conversation on the Venture Podcast hosted by Lambros Photios, Trent, who now leads Compono, explained that this simple gesture provided valuable insights into the attitude and sense of responsibility of candidates.

At the start of the interview process, Trent would accompany the candidate to the kitchen and offer them a choice of beverages such as water, coffee, tea, or a soft drink. This informal setting allowed him to gauge the candidate’s behavior and demeanor in a more relaxed environment.

‘I’m probably giving away all my dark secrets here now,’ continued Trent. 

‘But if you do come in and have an interview, as soon as you come in and meet me, 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.

‘Then we take that 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?’ 

But experts are now branding the test – which has nothing to do with your CV, skills or knowledge of the company – a ‘made up social experiment’, while one jobseeker called it ‘stupid’. 

What if an employer enlists a sneaky, little-known tactic to test your suitability for the role and ultimately the workplace… by offering you a steaming cup of coffee? (stock image)

Despite growing critique of the method, Trent insisted that beyond skills, knowledge and experience, employability mostly came down to ‘attitude’.

‘The attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of “wash your own coffee cup”‘ he said.

By implementing the approach, he claimed it would ensure he found the perfect employee who would fit into the culture of his company.

To do this, he needed the ‘lowest level task’ that was still regarded as highly important, no matter your position in the company.

The managing director said success was a collective effort, and each individual had their own part to play.

‘If you come into the office one day inside Xero, you’ll see the kitchens are almost always clean and sparkling and it’s very much off that concept of wash your coffee cup, but that sort of led into the interview space’ said Trent.

‘You really want to make sure that you’ve got people who have got a real sense of ownership, and that’s really what I was looking for.

The highly controversial coffee cup test is an employability technique lauded by Xero Australia boss Trent Innes (pictured) who says he refuses to hire anyone who doesn’t offer to take their empty coffee cup back to the kitchen at the end of a job interview

Interview expert Victoria Gates (pictured) sees the entire process as ‘weird’, and called on employers to harness methods that measured work-related experience

‘Attitude and ownership scale, especially in a really fast growing environment like we’ve been going through and still at this stage as well. We want to make sure we’ve got people who have a real, strong ownership and a growth mindset’.

Ultimately, the coffee cup test determines ‘that they’re actually going to fit into the culture inside Xero’. 

He said he also used it to measure whether a potential employee would ‘really take on everything that they should be doing’. 

But interview expert Victoria Gates, sees the entire process as ‘weird’, and called on employers to harness methods that measured work-related experience.

Victoria co-owns Expert Interviewers with Lorna Erickson, and together the Kansas City duo provide interview training services for both employers and jobseekers.

Under their TikTok account of the same name, Victoria posted a video sharing her thoughts on the coffee cup test.

‘What interviewers need to understand is attitudes and actions are best evaluated with actual job-related experience and not made up social experiments’ said Victoria.

‘Candidates have choices and if you find out that you didn’t get a job because of this weird social experiment you’re probably better off’.

She further labelled it a bunch of ‘mind games’ and implored jobseekers to consider ‘what it would be like to work’ for a business that used such tactics.

According to Trent, the coffee cup test is a good indicator of character, adding that only five to 10 per cent of interviewees have never offered to return their empty coffee cup to the kitchen (Stock image)

Similarly, Jeremy Sheffey, a Florida-based workforce and talent expert warned against using the coffee cup test as a ‘make-or-break idea’.

In a post shared to his LinkedIn page, he wrote: ‘I understand the logic, but I don’t think making things like this a make-or-break is a good idea. 

‘Sometimes I forget to say please or thank you. Generally, I do, but if I make a mistake because I’m engaged with the hiring manager, I shouldn’t be disqualified for that’.

He suggested companies instead invest in a quality personality assessment: ‘They are pretty accurate, and take a single incident out of the question’. 

One woman shared her concern after discovering an employment agency she worked with in Canada was in support of the coffee cup test.

In a lengthy post on Reddit, she called the career strategists ‘total dinosaurs’ among other things.

She also said the thought of engaging with a secret test on top of already ‘frazzled’ nerves during an interview was too much to bear. 

‘Interviews are days of frazzled nerves and you’re essentially an unpaid guest for anywhere from one to seven hours, perhaps spanning multiple days’ she wrote. 

‘There should be no secret tests – gauge behavior with pointed questions and be transparent. Also, how are candidates supposed to know where the kitchen is?

‘If I ever interview at a company that measures a candidates worth with stupid tests like these I hope they’ll inform me in advance not so I can put my cup away but so I can leave the interview immediately’.

She went on to say she was normally a ‘very respectful and tidy person’ in the workplace ‘but this is just too much on top of already ludicrous/highly subjective/bureaucratic processes’.

The poster also questioned how results that didn’t take into account gender or neurodivergent complexities could possibly be analysed.

She concluded: ‘Perhaps this is a stretch but it also could play into unconscious biases, for example if a female candidate doesn’t do this she might consciously or unconsciously be seen as not fulfilling all of her designated roles. 

‘I could also see neurodiverse people not understanding they’re being measured against this because it is not logical’.

But according to Trent, the coffee cup test is a good indicator of character, adding that only five to 10 per cent of interviewees have never offered to return their empty coffee cup to the kitchen.

‘The really pleasing thing is a vast majority of people do [offer],’ he said.

‘I don’t always make them take it back, it’s just an offer and usually I’d take it back for them of course – it’s just the sense of offering’.