Inviting Meaningful Applicant Performances in Employment Interviews

Kirkwood, William G.; Ralston, Steven M.

doi:10.1177/002194369903600103

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It is self-evident that employment interviews are important gateways into organizations, because, as Kirkwood and Ralston (1999, p. 55) report, “an overwhelming majority of organizations use the interview as a primary tool for selecting employees.” Consequently, job interviews, as an organizational genre, have been the focus of extensive academic research. This research has focused on themes such as reliability and validity, equal employment opportunities relating to gender and/or minorities, impression management, decision-making processes, and person to organization fit (for a literature review, see, e.g., Judge, Higgins, & Cable, 2000; Macan, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interactional Negotiation of the Rules of the Employment Interview Game: Negative Remarks About Third Parties and “Doing” Trust

Mieroop

Clifton

Schreurs³

2016

International Journal of Business Communication

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Job interviews have been the object of extensive academic research and of advice literature. Yet both have largely neglected to incorporate findings drawn from naturally occurring job interviews. In this article, we focus on the case of giving negative remarks about third parties. Popular how-to books strongly advise against such comments; however, while analyzing our corpus of more than 20 naturally occurring Belgian employment interviews, the frequent use of negative remarks about third parties was striking. This discrepancy between actual practice and prescriptive literature inspired us to investigate this phenomenon by focusing on the interactional dynamics of one job interview in which a candidate comments negatively on his boss after having constructed a personalized identity of a trustworthy person. We argue that, in this particular case, this negative comment demonstrates the candidate’s adaptability to the discursively renegotiated “rules” of the “interview game” and that this can be a successful strategy in employment interviews. To conclude, in the light of these findings, we speculate on the utility of the advice that “how-to books” provide.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interactional Negotiation of the Rules of the Employment Interview Game: Negative Remarks About Third Parties and “Doing” Trust

Mieroop

Clifton

Schreurs³

2016

International Journal of Business Communication

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“… 1 Defensive IM behaviors were coded for the sake of completeness, but were not included in data analyses. Applicants usually comply with interviewers' control in the interview so that interviewers should feel no need to justify their behaviors (Kirkwood and Ralston, 1999 ). In line with this assumption, interviewers rarely engaged in defensive IM in the present study ( M = 0.01 per minute, SD = 0.03).…”

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confidence: 99%

Selling and Smooth-Talking: Effects of Interviewer Impression Management from a Signaling Perspective

et al. 2017

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Prior research suggests that interviewers play an important role in representing their organization and in making the interview a pleasant experience for applicants. This study examined whether impression management used by interviewers (organization-enhancement and applicant-enhancement) is perceived by applicants, and how it influences applicants' attitudes, intentions, and emotions. Adopting a signaling perspective, this article argues that applicants' positive attitudes and intentions toward the organization increase if interviewers not only enhance the organization, but if the signals they sent (i.e., organization-enhancement) are actually received by the applicant. Similarly, applicants' positive emotions should increase if interviewers not only enhance the applicant, but if the signals they send (i.e., applicant-enhancement) are actually received by the applicant. A field study that involved video coding interviewers' impression management behavior during 153 selection interviews and pre- and post-interview applicant surveys showed that the signals sent by interviewers during the interview were received by applicants. In addition, applicants rated the organization's prestige and their own positive affect after the interview more positively when they perceived higher levels of organization-enhancement during the interview. Furthermore, applicants reported more positive affect and interview self-efficacy after the interview when they perceived higher levels of interviewer applicant-enhancement. We also found an indirect effect of interviewers' organization-enhancement on organizational prestige through applicants' perceptions of organization-enhancement as well as indirect effects of interviewers' applicant-enhancement on applicants' positive affect and interview self-efficacy through applicants' perceptions of applicant-enhancement. Our findings contribute to an integrated understanding of the effects of interviewer impression management and point out both risks and chances in selling and smooth-talking toward applicants.

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“…Recruiters often focus on factual resume content perceived as relevant to the job, such as educational achievements and reported skills. However, in addition to gathering factual data, recruiters apparently make inferences from resume information regarding subjective applicant attributes, such as personality (Kirkwood & Ralston, 1999), and use these inferences in determining initial employability (Brown & Campion, 1994;Dindoff, 1999).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Job Type and Recruiters' Inferences of Applicant Personality Drawn from Resume Biodata: Their Relationships with Hiring Recommendations

Cole

Feild

Giles

et al. 2004

Int J Selection Assessment

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Using data collected from 244 recruiters who reviewed resumes and made dispositional inferences and hiring recommendations for 122 entry-level job applicants, we found that type of job opening (Holland's Conventional vs. Enterprising jobs) moderated relationships between recruiter inferences of applicant personality traits and recruiter judgments of applicant employability. Results showed Conscientiousness correlated with employability ratings for Conventional jobs (e.g., accounting) while extraversion was most associated with employability ratings for Enterprising jobs (e.g., marketing).

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Inviting Meaningful Applicant Performances in Employment Interviews

Cited by 18 publications

References 29 publications

The Interactional Negotiation of the Rules of the Employment Interview Game: Negative Remarks About Third Parties and “Doing” Trust

The Interactional Negotiation of the Rules of the Employment Interview Game: Negative Remarks About Third Parties and “Doing” Trust

Selling and Smooth-Talking: Effects of Interviewer Impression Management from a Signaling Perspective

Job Type and Recruiters' Inferences of Applicant Personality Drawn from Resume Biodata: Their Relationships with Hiring Recommendations

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