Job Seekers’ Impression Management on Facebook: Scale Development, Antecedents, and Outcomes

Vanessa Myers,Jennifer Price,Shayda Sobhani,Alexandra Duval,Nicolas Roulin

doi:10.25035/pad.2021.01.010

Abstract

Many organizations rely on social media like Facebook as a screening or selection tool; however, research still largely lags behind practice. For instance, little is known about how individuals are strategically utilizing their Facebook profile while applying for jobs. This research examines job seekers’ impression management (IM) tactics on Facebook, personality traits associated with IM use, and associations between IM and job-search outcomes. Results from two complementary studies demonstrate that job seekers engage in three main Facebook IM tactics: defensive, assertive deceptive, and assertive honest IM. Job seekers lower in Honesty–Humility use more Facebook IM tactics, whereas those higher in Extraversion use more honest IM and those higher on Conscientiousness use less deceptive IM. Honest IM tactics used on Facebook are positively related to job-search outcomes. This paper therefore extends previous IM research by empirically examining IM use on Facebook, along with its antecedents and outcomes.

Highlights

Many organizations rely on social media like Facebook as a screening or selection tool; research still largely lags behind practice
In support of Hypothesis 1, a second exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with the remaining 18 items resulted in a final model with a clear three-factor structure explaining a total of 55.18% of variance, with good-to-excellent factor loadings, small cross-loadings, and high internal consistency reliabilities
Our findings suggest that job seekers high in deliberation may be weighing the cost of engaging in impression management (IM) practices on Facebook, deceptive IM and defensive IM, and are more careful and discriminant in how they apply IM tactics

Summary

Introduction

Many organizations rely on social media like Facebook as a screening or selection tool; research still largely lags behind practice. This research examines job seekers’ impression management (IM) tactics on Facebook, personality traits associated with IM use, and associations between IM and job-search outcomes. This paper builds on a recent conceptual framework (Roulin & Levashina, 2016) and examines job seekers’ impression management (IM) tactics on Facebook in two complementary studies. This research contributes to the literature on IM and applicant behaviors by (a) developing and validating a measure of job seekers’ IM on social media, (b) exploring the tactics in which job seekers are engaging, (c) investigating the personality antecedents of IM tactics, and (d) examining the relationships between IM and job-search outcomes. Applied to the context of social media platforms, Roulin and Levashina (2016) proposed that applicants use three main IM tactics.

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion