13 August 2023 , 06:00
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When it comes to interviewing for jobs, most candidates spend hours prepping answers to commonly asked questions. But no matter how prepared you may feel, there's no guarantee you won't be thrown a curve ball, purposely designed to expose your true character.
That's exactly what one man claims happens at ROTC Nuclear Power School, as its interviewing officers go out of their way to test their candidates. Speaking to the Mirror US, the man said: "My brother was in ROTC in college, and he told me this story. An applicant for ROTC Nuclear Power school would sit the chair in front of the desk of the interviewing officer during the interview.
"There was a second/similar chair in the room available for the applicant – off to the side. The chair in front of the desk for the applicant had one leg of chair – cut shorter – so the person sitting in the chair would wobble – during the interview. The successful test was to see if the applicant would be bold enough to stop the interview for a moment – to request to exchange his chair, for second/other chair - so they did not wobble."
It comes after boss Trent Innes revealed he uses a simple 'coffee cup test' to determine whether a candidate is right for the job. Trent 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 formerly worked at Xero Australia but left 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 wash 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."