Applicants' Self‐presentational Behavior across Cultures: Less self‐presentation in Switzerland and Iceland than in the United States

Abstract

Do US findings on applicants' self-presentational behavior generalize to other countries?We argue that applicants in some countries are less motivated to present themselves favorably than applicants in others because countries vary in their unemployment rate (leading to differences in competition between job applicants) and their endorsement of modesty values, influencing their beliefs regarding self-presentation. Using the randomized response technique, we obtained prevalence data on applicants' self-presentational behavior from Iceland and Switzerland and compared them with previously published US results. The prevalence rates of self-presentational behavior were fairly comparable in Iceland and Switzerland but significantly lower than in the United States. These results caution against using the same hiring strategy for all applicants from different cultures.

Storytelling in the Selection Interview? How Applicants Respond to Past Behavior Questions

“…Our results thus differ markedly from those of Stevens and Kristof (1995), where a large majority of applicants produced stories, many of them even in interviews that did not follow the behaviordescription format. However, it is difficult to compare our results with theirs, because of cultural differences in selfpresentation between Switzerland and the US (König et al 2011), as well as the large time gap between our study and theirs, not to mention potential differences in how stories were defined.…”

What is in Applicants' Minds When They Fill Out a Personality Test? Insights from a qualitative study

“…The strength of any qualitative approach lies in the ability to develop new research questions and to offer new perspectives, and we hope that more researchers in the field will find the use of qualitative approaches to be an attractive way to study poorly understood phenomena. However, qualitative research (and content analysis in particular) admittedly has more subjective aspects than running statistics with a computer program like the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL), and even though two authors conducted the content analyses together (which gave them more opportunities to reflect on their decisions, thus hopefully reducing subjective biases), a replication in other settings, particularly in other countries given the cross‐cultural differences in faking, would be highly welcome (König et al, , ). Moreover, future research should also use quantitative approaches to test the generalizability of these results.…”

Status Seeking and Manipulative Self‐presentation

“…Job search self‐presentation . Job search self‐presentation behaviors were assessed using thirteen items from König and colleagues (König et al, ; König, Wong, & Cen, ). Five of the items assess whether the person exaggerated (e.g., ‘When applying for the job, I exaggerated my skills to my benefit’).…”

“…Job seekers wish to present themselves in the most favorable light, and employers wish to find out the true abilities and temperament of the applicant. Self‐presentation in the job search process can take a variety of forms (König, Hafsteinsson, Jansen, & Stadelmann, ), including exaggerating positive attributes, pretending to be more interested in the job than one really is, as well as outright lying about abilities and experiences. These different forms of self‐presentation can be viewed by employers as counterproductive job‐search behaviors – because they are in conflict with the employer's goal to obtain objective and accurate information about the applicant.…”