*Written while sipping a Blank Street shaken vanilla bean cold brew, my new hyper fixation beverage*
Should a job applicant bring an iced coffee to a job interview?
In case you missed it, a debate over that very question is currently playing out online after a corporate recruiter, @caitlinrecruiter, posted a TikTok blasting “her Gen Z candidates” for showing up to job interviews with iced coffee, because apparently, that’s a thing.
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The post and most of the commentary that’s followed seems unserious. It feels like a silly and frivolous thing to argue about. But it’s part and parcel of the larger conversation about Gen Z and jobs — and a perfect example of the problem with how we talk about Gen Z and our habits.
This type of discourse is *exactly* what contributes to a stigma about my generation that is both unproductive and flat out wrong. As others have pointed out, it’s akin to the conversation about millennials and avocado toast, which many now look back on with regret.
It also assumes that all of Gen Z thinks it’s ok to show up to an interview with an iced beverage, and I’m telling you, that’s really not the case.
There are certainly qualms with how Gen Z approaches the job market — 20% of Gen Z have brought a parent to a job interview, according to career site Zety. So I’m not sure whether having an iced coffee in hand or not is what we should obsess over.
FWIW, I’d never show up to a job interview with an iced coffee. I’m way too type A for that. And when I explained this whole debacle to my mother, she quickly replied:
“If you or any of my other children brought a coffee to a job interview, I’ve done a horrible job.”
But I’m not alone, and apparently my mother wasn’t the only Gen Xer to parent her Gen Z kids this way.
I spent the past few days checking in with our Gen Z community to see how they *really feel* about the iced coffee question.
And most say they wouldn’t bring an iced coffee to a job interview either.
Why this matters, really
The controversy about whether or not young people should bring an iced beverage to a job interview really has *very little* to do with iced coffee.
Instead, it’s about:
a) our shifting corporate culture, which hasn’t looked the same since Covid,
b) the current job market, which is bleak for entry-level job applicants — just 30% of college grads got a job in their desired field last year, an 11-point drop from 2024,
and c) growing generational divides about cultural norms and behavior.
The bigger story here centers on a growing disconnect in expectations between today’s youngest employees and those in the position to hire them — and how those expectations are communicated.
For Gen Z, the world around us is changing at a faster-than-ever speed thanks to macroeconomic shifts like the introduction of social media, Covid, and AI, yet adults still expect our generation to play by their set of rules — rules that stood the test of time for years but have not kept up with the biggest inflection points of the past decade.
Take, for example, that fact that (as a friend pointed out to me in my research this week) the whole conversation about bringing iced coffee to a job interview feels dated, because since Covid, most young people aren’t going to in-person job interviews anyway. In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of the job search I hear from young people today is that the modern hiring process is frustrating and totally not transparent. Namely, it’s too digital and rarely includes face-to-face dialogue.
Read our May report — I Applied to 70 Jobs: Meet the Class of 2026
Zooming out, as our intern Emilia put it, when she thinks about the iced coffee debate:
“This being a thing that recruiters are looking at when hiring a candidate is stupid and airing it out on TikTok is part of the reason why Gen Z thinks the job market is cooked separate from it low-key being cooked.”
I asked her to explain. More on that below.