Effects of Applicant Personality on Resume Evaluations
Executive Agents
Distributed hand-to-hand or online, resumes are widely accepted as the first point of contact between the job applicant and a prospective employer. They are often perceived as the best reflection of your professional experience and are presented beautifully in some cases. Resumes also have the potential to secure your dream job through the perfect balance of experience or simply because your template is neat, you used the right adjectives, or presented yourself in just the right way for the role. However, recent studies may suggest that your resume is not the only reason why you never received a call back or progressed to the next stage of the interview process. It could be a result of the impression your personality has made on your resume and how certain resume cues impact reviewer judgement.
In our review of the present study titled ‘Effects of Applicant Personality on Resume Evaluations’ provided by researchers Gary Burns, Megan Morris, Neil. D. Christiansen and David A. Periard, the psychological processes involved with resume evaluation are considered through two separate study experiments which draw resume cues derived from five personality traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness.
Although indirectly, Burns et al. provide an excellent two-dimensional method to constructing a resume: content and style cues, both create what they call resume cues. They describe that content cues are ‘descriptive statements or symbols within the resume meant to either represent the [applicant’s] self-concept or to impress upon others how they would like to be viewed’. On the other hand, style cues are more abstract and ‘represent the resume’s format’ whilst taking into account ‘margin width’ and ‘types of fonts used’. Both experiments featured in the study prioritise content cues for good reason, as style comes second to content. This is possibly the most important aspect of the study to consider as executives and business professionals commonly focus on templates and resume design over content.
Recent studies on the subsections of the job resume are briefly discussed in this study, most of which focus on topics such as education, job experience, volunteering and group memberships. Past studies have also been linked to general resume cues which provide personality or hireability information based on qualitative aspects such as technical skills and education. Burns et al.’s study differs from previous ones because the cues they use to evaluate and ascribe to personality traits such as extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness are far more specific. They use a total of 77 resume cues to fit into those five personality traits.
Separated into two studies, the purpose of Study 1 was to examine 37 resumes in relation ‘to what extent individuals perceive both biographical information… and resume characteristics to be related to personality’. Study 2 examined 37 resumes in relation to ‘the extent that differences in applicants’ personality influence variability in resume content and style, and in turn, evaluations of the applicant by hiring professionals’. Essentially, the two studies explore differences in dispositional judgement between a common individual and a hiring professional. A total of 266 participants were involved in both studies and judgements were based on hireability for a managerial position.
Burns et al. conclude that ‘personality and perceptions of personality play a greater role in resume development and screening than has been previously suggested’. What this means is that resume reviewers possibly make personality and hireability judgements based on the specific resume cues you choose to provide. The results of both studies ironically suggest that reviewer personality also has a significant impact on applicant hireability. Study 1 indicated that ‘resume reviewers perceive a high level of connection between the author’s personality and both content and style cues’, whilst Study 2 maintains that ‘content and style cues can also play an important role in the evaluations that HR personnel make’. Personality can indeed be elicited from certain cues and they can also affect hireability ratings based on the five personality traits.
What we can take away from Burns et al.’s study is the importance of content and style in resumes. Whether or not these personality traits and cues are intentional is a different matter altogether, although they do offer us an excellent basis for determining what wording and stylistic cues we can intentionally exploit in resume preparation.
