Applicant impression management in job interview: The moderating role of interviewer affectivity

Abstract

In light of the organizational need to obtain talented personnel, an appropriate evaluation of applicant behaviour in the selection interview is crucial. Extending past research on applicant use of impression management (IM) tactics, this study examines the effects of a broad set of IM tactics in a field setting, and also investigates the moderating roles of two rarely tested interviewer characteristics: interviewer positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA). Due to the nested nature of the data, consisting of 142 job applicants and 33 interviewers, we adopt hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that three IM tactics (self‐focused IM, SFIM; other‐focused IM, OFIM; and non‐verbal IM, NVIM) are significantly positively related to interviewer evaluations. Furthermore, interviewer PA appears to strengthen the positive effects of SFIM tactics on interviewer evaluations, while the effects of NVIM tactics may be weaker when interviewers are high in NA. In addition, these findings suggest the importance of interviewer trait affectivity in explaining interviewer's decision‐making variability, which may lead to low inter‐rater reliability and in turn restrict the level of achievable validity.

A new model of impression management: Emotions in the ‘black box’ of organizational persuasion

“…Personality and trait affectivity of the target may also alter the impact of an IM tactic, as those who are cynical might be more likely to question the motives and sincerity driving others’ IM behaviour (Liu et al ., ). Trait affectivity of targets has also been shown to moderate the effectiveness of various IM tactics (Chen, Yang, & Lin, ), and targets may also be more greatly impacted by emotional displays if they have the ability to perceive the emotions correctly (Côté & Hideg, ). Although our model included two main individual differences, numerous research opportunities are available for others throughout the C‐EASI process (e.g., gender).…”

Passe inn og passe til

“…Arbeidsgiveres ønske om å skaffe presis informasjon om søkere, harmoniserer imidlertid ikke alltid med søkeres ønske om å framstå som attraktive kandidater (Spence 1974(Spence , 1981Granovetter 1995;Chen et al 2010). I utgangspunktet har arbeidssøkere, uavhengig av etnisitet, kjønn, alder, klasse osv., til felles at de prøver å signalisere til arbeidsgivere at de vil vaere en ressurs for virksomheten.…”

How does the interview change the importance of résumé information in acceptance decisions? An experimental study in the hotel industry

“…There is agreement in the research literature that during the employment interview, to increase the chance of being accepted by recruiters, applicants are motivated to use verbal behaviors as a means of IM by which they convince the recruiter that they are more qualified for the job vacancy than other their competitors (Chen et al 2010;Ellis et al 2002;Hazer and Jacobson 2003;Higgins and Judge 2004;Tsai et al 2005Tsai et al , 2010Van Iddekinge et al 2007). Verbal IM tactics can be divided into assertive IM tactics and defensive IM tactics.…”

“…Thus, we used these two categories of IM tactics to examine the moderating role of applicant's IM tactics on the relationship between the results of résumé reviews and the chance of acceptance after the interview. Assertive IM tactics consist of self-focused IM (SFIM) tactics and otherfocused IM (OFIM) tactics, both of which have been found to relate positively to interviewer evaluations (Chen et al 2010;Ellis et al 2002;Van Iddekinge et al 2007). Applicants use SFIM tactics to direct the focus of the conversation topic themselves and attempt to create an excellent image of themselves by acting like an ideal employee, whereas applicants who use OFIM tactics concentrate the conversation on the interviewer or the organization and attempt to make themselves be perceived as likeable (Bolinio et al 2008;Kacmar et al 1992).…”