The job mar­ket is high­ly com­pet­i­tive right now in these uncer­tain times, and poten­tial employ­ers are choos­ing from a large pool of qual­i­fied can­di­dates. Here are a few tricks that hir­ing man­agers may be using to secret­ly test you (if we ever get back to the office).

1. The coffee trick

Trent Innes cre­at­ed a sim­ple test to deter­mine if a can­di­date is a good fit. Here’s how the cof­fee trick works: When some­one comes in for an inter­view, Trent takes them to the kitchen and makes sure they come away with a cup of cof­fee or tea. After the inter­view is done, Trent watch­es to see if the per­son offers or attempts to take the emp­ty cof­fee cup back to the kitchen. If they do, he believes they’d be a good fit for the work­place. If they just leave their cup at the table and walk away, they won’t get the job.

So if you find your­self sip­ping a bev­er­age, make sure you at least ask what you should do with the emp­ty cup, or take it with you when you leave.

2. The silent treatment

Anoth­er trick an inter­view­er may employ is a tech­nique used by jour­nal­ists when they inter­view a sub­ject: Leav­ing silence. In a jour­nal­is­tic sit­u­a­tion, the reporter may leave a pause so the sub­ject feels so uncom­fort­able they try to fill the silence by say­ing some­thing else, or elab­o­rat­ing fur­ther on the pre­vi­ous top­ic.

In a job inter­view, the inter­view­er may be try­ing to see how you han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. Do you remain calm, or do you rush to fill the awk­ward pause? As career expert J.T. O’Don­nell explained, “If there is a silence, we don’t want to take over the sit­u­a­tion and try to fill it. Some­times the hir­ing man­ag­er is tak­ing notes. What­ev­er the case, we need to just be patient, take a deep breath, and wait for them to re-engage.”

Instead of word-vom­it­ing what­ev­er you can think of to say, allow the pause to hap­pen. If it’s still qui­et, you can ask, “Did I answer your ques­tion or would you like me to elab­o­rate fur­ther?” This puts you in a posi­tion of con­trol and shows that your feath­ers aren’t eas­i­ly ruf­fled.

3. The sit and wait

The wait­ing peri­od before the inter­view begins is sure­ly the worst part, but some employ­ers actu­al­ly want to make it hard­er. Inter­view­ers might leave can­di­dates sit­ting in the wait­ing room longer than they need to in order to assess how well they han­dle uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions. Try to remain calm and focused, but don’t be so absorbed in your phone that you seem non­cha­lant. Breathe!

4. Drop the pen

It’s pos­si­ble that at some point dur­ing your dis­cus­sion, the inter­view­er might “acci­den­tal­ly” drop their pen on the floor.

As Anurag Mehta of Grav­i­ty Ana­lyt­ics explained, “Part way through the inter­view, while they were mid-con­ver­sa­tion, he would inten­tion­al­ly ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ drop his pen on the floor in between him and the inter­vie­wee. If the inter­vie­wee instinc­tive­ly bent down to pick up the pen, he/she passed the ‘jerk test’ and was a keep­er.”

His con­tention was that a lot of peo­ple pre­pare well and can put up a charm­ing front, but how they react instinc­tive­ly, when the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help some­one or be kind presents itself, is what can be tru­ly telling.

5. Meet the team

It’s usu­al­ly a good sign if you’re asked to leave the inter­view room and meet the team in the main office. But this also might be a way for the hir­ing man­ag­er to crowd­source their opin­ion of you. If the inter­view­er likes you, but the team gets a bad vibe, that is not going to bode well for you.

And remem­ber, “the team” can extend to the per­son who checks you in at the door to the barista who works down­stairs. Be friend­ly and warm with every­one and don’t let your guard down until you are sev­er­al blocks away from the build­ing.

6. The receptionist intel

You may have heard the sto­ry about the wait­er rule, which is attrib­uted to the CEO Bill Swan­son. Swan­son notes how poten­tial employ­ees treat wait­ers when he takes them out to lunch. “A per­son who is nice to you but rude to the wait­er, or to oth­ers, is not a nice per­son. Watch out for peo­ple who have a sit­u­a­tion­al val­ue sys­tem, who can turn the charm on and off depend­ing on the sta­tus of the per­son they are inter­act­ing with. Be espe­cial­ly wary of those who are rude to peo­ple per­ceived to be in sub­or­di­nate roles.”

This same rule can be applied to the recep­tion­ist who greets you when you arrive for the inter­view. Often recep­tion­ists are relied on for their opin­ion about office pol­i­tics, so make sure you are cour­te­ous upon arrival.

This arti­cle first appeared on Con­sid­er­able.