The Duolingo taxi test – could being rude to the driver cost you your dream job?

Duolingo recently revealed a seemingly genius trick to assess candidates for a senior position. Hiring managers at the language-learning app read applications and cover letters, scheduled phone interviews and asked all the usual questions about skills and ambitions. But they also found out about how the candidates behaved in the taxi ride to the interview – and it cost one candidate a senior position.

The idea behind the recruitment^[1] approach is that if someone is rude to a taxi driver^[2], they might be rude at work – especially to those who are junior to them. In the Duolingo case, the candidate ticked lots of boxes for the role. But when the company heard how they treated the driver, the candidate wasn’t offered the job.

This resonates with research that found that people will work hard to make a good impression^[3] in a job interview and that these efforts can mask what they are genuinely like.

After all, most people can avoid being rude in a one-off, high-stakes situation. But being friendly at all times can probably only be achieved by those who are genuinely warm people. By assessing people when they are not aware they are being monitored, Duolingo hoped to filter out the truly friendly from those who work hard to fake it.

Duolingo is not the first company to come up with the idea of looking at candidates’ behaviour^[4] outside the interview room. Companies look at prospective employees’ social media for exactly the same reason. People might reveal more of their true selves^[5] on social media when they don’t know they are being watched by potential employers.

Read more: Putting your CV together? Complete honesty might not be the best policy^[6]

But from the candidate’s perspective, there are several issues with Duolingo’s taxi driver test. First, it may not be ethical to use behaviour to make a hiring decision that is outside of the candidate’s consent.

Second, it is unclear what a taxi driver is evaluating when they judge a passenger’s behaviour. Maybe someone is nervous about the interview or is stressed because getting to the interview on time on top of their other responsibilities made them rush. Under these circumstances, candidates might seem less friendly than they otherwise would be.

Other candidates might prefer to quietly review their interview notes instead of chatting with the driver. Again, this does not signal a rude person – maybe just an introverted one^[7].

But still, are behaviour tests like these a good idea in principle for a hiring manager?

Research suggests^[8] that Duolingo might be going overboard in its efforts to detect those who are faking being friendly to make a good impression. Although people have been shown to use a variety of strategies^[9] to impress in job interviews and beyond (flattery or “humblebragging”^[10], for example), my research has found that many of these tactics are not particularly effective^[11].