Why Every Job Interview Should Include an Office Tour

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Imagine you’re going to rent an apartment. You’re told the address, number of square feet, how many bedrooms and bathrooms, the appliances, and the monthly rent. That should be enough details to make a decision, right? Oh, you actually want to see the apartment before renting it. Whyever would you want that; isn’t knowing everything listed above enough?

Obviously, it’s not. Getting a feel for the layout, amount of sunlight, how thin the walls are, and just the overall feel of the unit really matters. Two apartments can have the similar answers to the questions above but have a totally different feel.

Now consider your new desk. (I’ll use the term desk for brevity, but it may be a desk, a cubicle, or an office.) During the interview process, how many companies will show you the desk where you’ll be working? Very, very few. As for why companies do not show potential hires their desk, I don’t have a good answer. My best guess is that’s how we all saw it done and so that’s how we do it now. That’s never a good excuse.

More important is why it matters. First, our environment is always important. You’re going to be working there for forty hours a week (or more). While some of it may be in meetings, much of it will be at your desk. Someone working long hours at work, and/or who is often outside their apartment may even spend more time at their desk than they do at home (at least time at home and awake). Consider that most people won’t rent a hotel room these days without seeing a picture of the room, and yet they’re only staying there for a few days. Your desk is where you’ll be spending significant hours for years on end.

Certainly, the overall feel of the office in general and your future desk matter. For some people, however, it may be much more specific. The amount of sunlight, or even being able to see a window from the desk can make a difference to people with seasonal affective disorder; for some, reduced sunlight leads to depression or anxiety. Those who are sensitive to noise may want to know how loud or quiet their desk will be. If you’re sharing a close space you may want to see who you’re sharing it with (e.g., does this person shower regularly, or wear too much perfume). Temperature may matter; this is often an issue for women and if you’re in a drafty part of the office or right under a vent that may be very unpleasant.

It gets worse. There’s research suggesting that women in open office environments feel more judged on their appearances as described in the Fast Company article, “The subtle sexism of your open-plan office” about the research paper “Doing gender in the ‘new office’” by Alison Hirst of Anglia Ruskin University and Christina Schwabenland of the University of Bedfordshire. The Fast Company article received a lot of reader comments which were summarized in a follow-up article, “Readers respond: Open offices are terrible for women.” In short, open office environments make some women more anxious and less comfortable (read the paper to articles to understand why).

Let’s put blatant sexism aside for a moment, not because it doesn’t exist, but sadly some people don’t think it’s as common as it really is, or may think, “well that’s not a problem in my office.” We’ll focus on some of the other issues. I learned long ago that small things can make people the most miserable. Suppose your office heat went out and it’s 55 degrees in the office on a winter morning. Everyone is wearing jackets and not happy. Obviously, someone would call to repair the heating system, and the employees may need to deal with an unpleasant environment for a day or two. Now imagine the office is a few degrees colder than you’d like it. Perhaps you run cold and prefer 72 degrees, or ideally 73 or 74. But the boss runs hot and wants it at 68. Unlike the HVAC problem which is widely recognized as a problem and fixed in a day or two, you have to put up with this every day. Every day you show up to work and are uncomfortable. Not only does office temperature impact satisfaction as discussed in the Nature report “Overcooling of offices reveals gender inequity in thermal comfort” by Thomas Parkinson, Stefano Schiavon, Richard de Dear & Gail Brager, but studies have even shown that temperature can affect cognitive performance by gender, as covered in the paper “Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance” by Tom Y. Chang and Agne Kajackaite.

Even if you’re not especially noise sensitive, some level of background noise can be distracting at the wrong times. Suppose your job involves some concentrated, focused work each morning. Unfortunately, your desk (perhaps the only available desk in the department when you join) is right next to the sales team who spends their mornings cold calling and ringing the sales bell. It’s not unlike in the old days when you might be seated in the no-smoking section or a restaurant (or a plane way back when) but you were right on the edge of the smoking section. That smoke ruined your meal or flight just as surely as the noise next to you can run your concentration. Noise, like smoke, doesn’t respect arbitrary boundaries, just because some office planner thinks they exist.

You may be asking if the amount of light, or noise, or temperature or openness really matters? To me personally, not so much (with some exceptions). It may not matter to you, either. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important for others. What is important is that we let people make their own decisions. You may be ok taking a salary of X but someone else might not be. Can you imagine taking a job and being told, “you’ll find out the salary after you join.” If it’s normal to give people the compensation details ahead of their decision so they can know if it’s a right fit for them, why shouldn’t we let them know about their work environment?

This is equally important for employers. Companies spend billions each year on tools to increase productivity. Imagine if a potential hire said, “oh the tool you use would actually make me less productive;” you wouldn’t invest in that tool. If candidates knew they’d be less productive in your workplace it’s to your benefit as well as theirs that this is known ahead of time. An employee may not explicitly say it, but they will self-select.

This may seem trivial, but for many people it’s not. It really would impact their decision. If you don’t believe me, ask a friend who is sensitive to light noise or temperature. Or ask a woman if she’s ever felt an office layout or certain desk locations were unpleasant to work in. Thankfully, it only takes a few minutes to walk someone around the office and show them the desk where they would work. This doesn’t have to be in the first interview, but it should be done at some point.

It might seem a little silly or awkward to do this as part of the hiring team or even more so if you're the candidate asking for this. As I wrote in “Not Sure How to Ask about Corporate Culture during an Interview? Blame Me.” you can very much blame me. “Career expert Mark Herschberg has a very compelling article on why candidates should see the office and their desk at some point in the interview process; since this is the last round, would you mind showing me the office and where I’d be working? If you’re curious why, I can send you the article later today.” As a hiring manager you can say, “We like to follow best practices and one of them comes from career expert Mark Herschberg who recommends that all [final round] candidates should get a chance to see where they’d be working.” In both cases you’re basically saying, “if this is weird, blame Mark, not me,” (and I’m very much ok with that).

Again, this is uncommon today, but everything was uncommon at some point until we started doing it. Some companies already include photos of the office in their “about us” section on the hiring page, maybe one day they’ll even show the desk environment on the job post just like hotel websites do with their rooms. Don’t let convention stand in the way of catching a potential issue with your work environment that you’ll be stuck with for years. This benefits both the employee and the employer. Ask to see where you’d be working (and feel free to blame me).

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