Examining recruiters’ assessment of impression management tactics as used by job seekers on social networking sites

Recruiters nowadays have started focusing their attention towards Social Networking Sites (SNS) for they provide an ideal basis to judge one’s personality on, and deal with on-line Impression Management (IM) tactics among job seekers and/or candidates in job seeking behavior. Impression Management is defined here as the conscious or unconscious attempt to control the job-related images that are projected in social interactions. Although face-to-face impression management is studied enough, IM in an on-line setting is not researched yet. In our study, we first developed scales for quantitatively measuring various online Impression Management tactics that job seekers employ on SNS to positively present themselves. Using a sample (N=186) of graduates from various international universities, a confirmatory factor analysis showed that self-promotion, supplication, ingratiation and photograph usage are main on-line Impression Management tactics. Further, the usage of online Impression Management tactics by job seekers was compared with what recruiters assess as important Impression Management tactics on SNS to create a measure of job seekers’ behavioral effectiveness of Impression Management tactics. Using the Wilcoxon signed rank test, we showed that self-promotion and photographs was used significantly less often by job seekers than recruiters would expect given their perceived importance. Both supplication and ingratiation showed no significant differences between job seekers and recruiters in terms of their use.