Job interviews can be daunting, and brushing up on your knowledge about the role and company may seem like the most obvious preparation to do.
But one boss believes the response to a simple 'salt and pepper' test, which he trials on every candidate, speaks louder than experience and qualifications do - and can even show their 'true character'.
Sharing their manager's interview tactic on Reddit, one employee said: "A company I used to work for does all-day interviews with multiple people, and one of them is always a lunch interview.
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"I heard about a guy who would base his entire decision on one thing - whether or not the person he was interviewing tried their food before reaching for salt, pepper, hot sauce, etc. If you didn't try your food first, you didn't get a pass from him."
Why the employee stated he isn't entirely sure why he puts so much trust into the test, he believes it must show something about a person's true character - and whether they're willing to try something before judging it, The Mirror reports.
He added: "Glad I didn't interview with him because I pretty much always add pepper to stuff."
But he isn't the only one who judges a person on their attitude during an interview, as former boss of Xero Australia, Trent Innes, claims he wouldn't hire anyone who failed his 'coffee cup test' as he believes it shows more about a person's attitude than any interview question possibly could. He was so reliant on it that he would automatically blacklist anybody who failed it from working at his company.
Trent, who left Xero Australia in September 2021, previously shared his little trick while speaking on the business podcast The Venture with entrepreneur Lambros Photios. Speaking on the podcast in 2019, he explained: "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.
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"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? You can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience but it really does come down to attitude, and the attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of 'wash your coffee cup'."
He claims this trick works like a charm, saying the kitchens in their office are always very clean. He added: "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 of that concept of washing your coffee cup. It's really just making sure that they're actually going to fit into the culture inside Xero, and really take on everything that they should be doing."
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