Posting pictures of friends on Facebook and similar pages may give employers a good sense of your extroverted personality. Broadcasting a membership in the “I Skip Class to Go Shopping” group, on the other hand, will not help your cause.
The advice is common coin among job counselors (even though many students still persist in posting unflattering disclosures.) What is perhaps surprising is how much Facebook, MySpace and similar Internet sites can tell about a person’s intelligence and personality, says a University of Evansville researcher.
Peter Rosen, an assistant professor of management information systems, recently conducted a study to see if Facebook pages offered a means of judging if a job applicant would make a good worker. Rosen and his colleague Donald H. Kluemper, an assistant professor of management at Louisiana State, found six students who agreed to take standard tests employers use to measure intelligence and personality. They also gave the researchers access to their Facebook pages.
Rosen and Kluemper then trained 63 Louisiana State students enrolled in a course on employment selection to look for certain telltale signs on the Facebook pages. The amateur rankers were to try to guess how the study subjects scored on the IQ and personality tests, as well as to estimate their grade-point averages.
The results suggested that Facebook does indeed reveal much. For instance, the raters gave the subject who had done best on the intelligence test an above-average IQ score of 110.4. The subject who had done the worst was given a score of 94.7.
“That’s exactly what we want to see,” Rosen said.
The raters' scores, in many cases, corresponded equally well with the subjects’ on the personality tests. Postings on Facebook proved good signifiers of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism — the “Big Five” traits for which many employers test.
That’s not to say the mark was always hit. The raters guessed one student had a GPA of 3.46, when it was in fact 1.81.
Jamie Brandy, a University of Evansville senior studying communications and Spanish, said it has occurred to her that employers may look at her Facebook page. Partly for that reason, she is quick to list groups she has joined: a sorority, the student newspaper and yearbook club.
As graduation approaches, she has also thought it prudent to start reviewing her page.
“I think I will go back through and make sure there is nothing too terrible on there,” Brandy said.
By in large, Rosen and his fellow researcher were happy with the results. What then did they look for to learn so much?
Rosen said he and Kluemper were careful to caution the raters about correlating any one posting on a Facebook page to a particular ranking. They were instead to form a general judgment by taking in a variety of indicators.
An important sign was the number of friends the subjects had listed online. To form a new relationship, a user must first send another person a friend request, which can be rejected. The number of friends listed on a page is thus a rough indicator of how well-liked a person is.
In the study, the raters generally took popularity to mean that a subject would score high in tests of extraversion and agreeableness. A large number of photos showing friends often led to the same conclusion.
Still, Rosen advised Facebook users against rushing to post any and all pictures. Images of binge drinking or other illicit behaviors could lead to a low ranking on a test of conscientiousness, defined as a tendency to act dutifully and show self-discipline. Another undesirable trait — neuroticism, or a tendency to feel unpleasant emotions easily — could be seen in subjects who routinely posted pessimistic comments and complaints, Rosen said.
“If your status message says, ‘I can’t stand this freezing weather and it’s another bad semester at UE,’ you would rate higher on neuroticism,” he said.
As for intelligence, it was often measured by looking at the interests on the subjects’ pages. Favorite books, movies, television shows and quotes can all suggest the quality of a mind, Rosen said.
Meanwhile he acknowledged the possibility that postings will contain outright lies meant to keep up appearances, but some information cannot be faked. Comments and pictures put up by friends, for one, often reveal as much about users as do their own disclosures.
Being able to tell so much gives employers a great means of screening job applicants. Take someone who began posting photographs to Facebook in the first year of college.
“You now have a four year history of your life from freshman to senior year in photo form,” Rosen said.
The new-found power immediately leads to the matter of ethics. Through the Web sites, employers can learn of a job candidates’ sex, age, race and others traits which may not be asked about on an application. There is also the question of whether it is right to look at personal information without first obtaining permission.
Evan Copeland, a senior studying mass communications at the University of Evansville, said the possibility of employers’ prying doesn’t bother him.
“I wouldn’t put anything offensive or anything that might hurt my chances of getting a job on there,” he said. “So I hope they do look at it.”
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