Iced coffee in a job interview? HR pros weigh in

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To be (someone who brings an iced coffee to a job interview), or not to be…that is the question.

A fierce debate about job interview etiquette took the internet by storm last month, when Caitlin Wehniainen, a corporate recruiter, posted a TikTok warning job seekers against a habit she’s observed among her Gen Z candidates: bringing iced coffee to job interviews.

“Don’t show up with iced coffee or the iced latte,” she said. “Save that for well before the interview or after the interview. Go and get one, but don’t, like, waltz into your interview all casual with an iced coffee.”

Candidates have a short period of time to make an impression on prospective employers, and having iced coffee in hand can be distracting, unprofessional, or as if the applicant is treating the job interview as another item on their list of errands, she explained.

Suffice to say, Wehniainen’s post elicited a lot of strong opinions. HR Brew asked HR and talent acquisition (TA) professionals to weigh in on the debate via email. (For any lurking job seekers, we have bad news: Opinions were nearly split.)

Pro-iced coffee. Norms and expectations about “professionalism” have evolved over time, HR and TA pros pointed out. Job interviews of yesteryear required candidates to dress in formal business attire with hard copies of their résumés in hand, said Dave Brown, CEO of Americas at the multinational recruitment giant Hays.

“Many of those expectations reflected the workplace of that era. As work has changed, so have the signals we associate with professionalism,” he said.

As remote work and virtual interviews became more commonplace, young job seekers became accustomed to having whatever they needed nearby, off-camera. They’ve carried that with them as they transitioned to in-person interviews, Nadia Alaee, senior director of HR business partners, people programs and strategy at Deel, said.

“If a cup is what tips you to a ‘no,’ you’re evaluating props, not people,” Alaee added.

Additionally, multiple HR and TA leaders said that the debate itself could be a distraction from what truly matters in an interview: determining if the candidate has the necessary skills to perform the job.

“It is hard enough to effectively gauge skills, expertise, judgment, and adaptability during a 30-minute window, and that is before you incorporate outdated views on which liquids, served at which temperatures, are acceptable interview accessories,” Alana Brandes, CPO of Guild, told us.

“My take? We’ve lost the plot…As AI changes jobs faster than job descriptions can keep up,

employers need to spend less time looking for perfect signals and more time

understanding what people can actually do and what they could learn to do next,” Carina Cortez, CPO of Cornerstone OnDemand, said. TA teams should focus on identifying candidates with the capacity to do that, instead of disqualifying them based on low-hanging fruit. “If we’re serious about building the workforce of the future, we need to look beyond surface-level signals and focus on what really matters—and I don’t think it’s the iced coffee.”

Ultimately, job interviews are a two-way street; job-seekers are determining whether a company fits their needs too.

“If a company rules someone out because they walked in with a cold brew, that tells the candidate a lot about what working there would be like (sounds like no fun?),” Kaylee Ritter, director of HR at SolComms, a PR and communications agency, said. “Plenty of us bring coffee to every meeting, so holding candidates to a stricter standard than we hold ourselves isn’t about professionalism to me; it’s about power.”

Anti-iced coffee. On the flip side, people pros told HR Brew that bringing an iced coffee to an interview could hamper a job seeker’s ability to make a strong first impression.

“I don’t think bringing an iced coffee to an interview should cost someone the job, but I also definitely would not recommend it. Interviews are all about making a good first impression, and candidates should really avoid introducing unnecessary distractions, or anything that could make them appear too ‘casual,’” said Jason Leverant, the president and COO of AtWork, a national staffing franchise.

Some also warned about treating a job interview like any other meeting.

“An interview is a different setting with different expectations compared to a meeting once you have a job,” Kate O’Sullivan, co-founder and founding partner of executive coaching firm CoachSelect, told HR Brew. Job seekers who want to change the culture around job interview etiquette should start by gaining the respect of and influence over those who hold power, and they can’t do that if they don’t get hired, she added.

Some expressed that the ice coffee could be a sweaty, slurpy, distraction, and a measure of a candidate’s social aptitude.

“Most hiring managers aren’t making decisions based on whether a candidate drank coffee, but walking into an important interview carrying a dripping iced coffee can create an unnecessary distraction,” Robert Hosking, executive director of the administrative and customer support practice at Robert Half, said. “Save the latte for afterward and keep the focus on showcasing your skills, experience, and personality.”

Regardless of one’s opinion on the issue, the debate over bringing iced coffee to a job interview has grown so much that candidates would do best to avoid the practice.

“Ugh, I hate to say this. Don’t bring the iced coffee. People are too divided on the subject and because it’s so competitive out there, avoid any type of distraction,” Catherine Fisher, a career expert at LinkedIn, wrote on the platform.