{"text":[[{"start":5.56,"text":"Today’s big issue on the job market front lines? AI maybe? Out-of-work graduates? Or why the middle-aged are unable to snag a role? So last week. We have moved on to a more pressing matter: is it OK to bring an iced coffee into a job interview?"}],[{"start":19.68,"text":"A recruiter with 16 years of experience hiring for “super buttoned-up corporations” took to TikTok this week to complain about candidates she sees showing up with a coffee in hand, as if the interview is a brief stop between Target, Starbucks and other activities in their day. “It looks a little too casual to me . . . Don’t waltz into your interview all casual with an iced coffee,” said Caitlin Wehniainen from the US company On Cue Hire. Perception, she noted, was important in a short window of 30-35 minutes."}],[{"start":48.7,"text":"Opinions on the ICD (iced coffee debate) were furious and swift (perhaps explaining the punctuation). “But an interview IS just a stop in my day. It’s not my whole day,” wrote one poster. “I’ve always been offered a coffee at interviews but it’s disrespectful to bring my own? That’s weird,” said another. “As a millennial, can we please let go of the weird rules boomers and Gen X imposed on us? Interviews are stressful enough.”"}],[{"start":73.12,"text":"My initial reaction was different. An interview? Congratulations! Job hunters’ contact with flesh-and-blood humans seems to be in short supply, overshadowed by bots trawling through CVs for keywords and screening by online avatars. Meeting a real person seems a cause for celebration: perhaps even a fancy cold beverage?"}],[{"start":91.62,"text":"Work is a regular source of viral content on TikTok. Gen Z’s previous greatest hits include “quiet quitting” (working your hours rather than putting in unpaid overtime) and “lily padding” (hopping from job to job)."}],[{"start":104.04,"text":"Wehniainen says the “intensity of the response” indicates “how stressful the job market feels right now”. A helpful tip felt like yet another burden for candidates."}],[{"start":109.68,"text":"On one level, the ICD is incredibly stupid. But work is incredibly stupid, full of petty squabbles and perceived slights. Gestures can make or break a day. One friend turned down a senior job because the interviewers, clutching hot mugs, didn't offer him a coffee."}],[{"start":126.52,"text":"Louise Ashley, associate professor at Queen Mary Business School, who researches social mobility, sees the “ICD” as “one of those things that seems incredibly small” but is also “quite massive” because it reveals an insight into “all the tiny unwritten rules we use to decide whether somebody looks professional”."}],[{"start":144.48,"text":"Obviously, there is no rule that states: “Thou shalt not enter an interview carrying an iced latte,” she observes. However, if it makes the candidate look too casual, interviewers are “acknowledging that a candidate’s suitability for the job is judged as much on objective measures of talent as on whether they know how to perform the occasion correctly.”"}],[{"start":163.26,"text":"This also underlines the issue of class and social capital. “Professional workplaces are full of rules that are rarely written down, and if you’ve grown up around professional people, you are more likely to have absorbed those rules. Other people have to work it out — and may get it wrong.”"}],[{"start":178.56,"text":"There’s an added complexity, she says, in that there is also “status in appearing relaxed, self-assured, even slightly disinterested — sort of: ‘Of course I would like the job, but my entire future does not depend upon getting it’.”"}],[{"start":191.68,"text":"In the age of AI, the argument goes, workplaces are crying out for the quirk of humans — those who can push back, bring something different, think outside the box et cetera. In my experience, employers think they like these things, but in reality often prefer people who conform."}],[{"start":207.04,"text":"The ICD also illuminates the perennial bias to “always think the latest generation of young people are the worst ever”, according to Bobby Duffy, author of The Generation Myth. He points to the work by Michael Rose, the industrial sociologist, who wrote in the early 1980s about bosses’ views of the young people of that day (baby boomers) having lower motivation and professionalism than previous generations. In other words, “we have a rosy retrospection about how great [and] serious we were when young”, Duffy says."}],[{"start":238.2,"text":"No doubt, tomorrow’s social media will have moved on to a new workplace divide: eating al desko perhaps? Headphones or not?"}],[{"start":246.14,"text":"Perhaps we would all do well to watch the final episode of the great documentary series 70 Up, which followed a diverse group of British people from the age of seven to 70. While watching, I was struck by participants’ appraisals of their lives, with most focusing on their relationships rather than work. There was certainly no mention of failed interviews or even coffee drinks. Such a perspective was a balm. Well, until someone snubs me in the corridor or forgets to reply to my email."}],[{"start":278.2,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1790389968_2111.mp3"}