“Two Beers and a Puppy: A Fun (Yet Insightful) Guide to Compatibility”

Picture this: a cozy pub, a cold beer in hand, and a potential colleague, mentee, or business partner across the table. How do you gauge if this person is genuinely a good fit for your team or merely good at performing in interviews? Enter the “Two Beers and a Puppy” test, a deceptively simple yet remarkably insightful framework for assessing professional compatibility, straight out of Ross McCammon’s 2015 book, Works Well with Others: An Outsider’s Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You.

The Essence of the Test

At its core, the test boils down to two disarmingly simple questions:

1. Would you (gladly and willingly) have two beers with this person?
2. Would you allow this person to look after your puppy over a weekend?

On the surface, these questions sound almost flippant. But they tap into two critical dimensions that traditional interviews and performance reviews consistently fail to capture: personal chemistry and trustworthiness.

Here is how the answers break down:

• No and No: This person is neither enjoyable to be around nor someone you can trust with responsibility. Proceed with extreme caution.
• Yes (beers) and No (puppy): Fun to be around, but you wouldn’t trust them with something that actually matters. Fine for casual collaboration; risky for high-stakes projects.
• No (beers) and Yes (puppy): Dependable and reliable, but not someone you’d choose to spend downtime with. Valuable team member, but the relationship may lack warmth.
• Yes and Yes: This is the gold standard. They are both enjoyable and deeply trustworthy. These are the people you build teams around.

Why This Framework Actually Works

The genius of the “two beers” question is that it serves as a proxy for a dimension of professional relationships that HR departments ignore: Would you voluntarily spend unstructured time with this person? Work is full of forced interactions, but the people you actually choose to grab lunch with, vent to after a tough meeting, or call when you need honest advice, those relationships form the connective tissue of high-performing teams.

Theresa Welbourne, a professor at the University of Nebraska who studies organizational energy, has noted that the quality of informal social interactions is one of the strongest predictors of team performance. Teams that genuinely enjoy each other’s company innovate faster, communicate more openly, and recover from setbacks more quickly.

The “puppy” question, meanwhile, measures something different: integrity under low supervision. Your puppy doesn’t file a performance review. If someone will feed your dog on time, keep it safe, and handle the unexpected, that tells you something profound about their character that no reference check can replicate.

Applying the Test in Real Hiring Decisions

Progressive companies have begun incorporating informal assessment into their hiring processes. Google’s famous “airport test” (would I want to be stuck at an airport with this person?) is a spiritual cousin to the Two Beers test. Spotify uses informal coffee chats as a formal stage of their hiring pipeline. The goal is the same: assess the human being, not just the resume.

You can apply this framework without being crass about it. Instead of literally asking “would you have two beers with me?” try these approaches:

• Include an informal lunch or coffee as part of the interview process
• Ask scenario-based questions that reveal character: “Tell me about a time you made a mistake that no one else noticed. What did you do?”
• Pay attention to how they treat waitstaff, receptionists, and junior team members, not just the hiring manager
• Notice whether they ask you genuine questions or just perform prepared answers

Beyond the Test: Striving to Be a “Six Beers and a Baby” Person

McCammon’s framework isn’t just a filter for evaluating others, it’s a mirror for self-reflection. The aspiration, as he puts it, is to become a “six beers and a baby” kind of person: someone so enjoyable and so deeply trusted that colleagues would willingly spend an entire evening with you and entrust you with their most precious responsibility.

What does that look like in practice? It means being the colleague who follows through on commitments without being chased, gives honest feedback with kindness, celebrates others’ wins without jealousy, admits mistakes openly, and makes meetings better just by being in the room.

Conclusion

Next time you’re assessing a potential hire, a new business partner, or even a colleague you’re considering for a high-stakes project, give the “Two Beers and a Puppy” test a try. It cuts through the polished veneer of professional performance and gets at what actually matters: Are you someone I genuinely want to work with, and can I trust you when it counts? Whether you’re striving to find or become a “six beers and a baby” kind of person, it’s all about fostering relationships built on enjoyment, trust, and mutual respect. Cheers to meaningful connections, beers optional, puppies always welcome.