Do applicants fake? An examination of the frequency of applicant

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to empirically test whether applicants fake their responses to personality based employment inventories. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilized a within subjects design to asses whether applicants elevated their scores in an applicant conditions. Subjects who applied for a job were later contacted and asked to complete the same personality measure under an honest instructional set. The within subjects design allowed the researcher to examine faking behavior at the individual level of analysis rather than draw inferences between applicant and incumbent groups. Findings – Results suggest that a significant number of applicants do fake personality based selection measures. Depending on the confidence interval used between 30 and 50 percent of applicants elevated their scores when applying for a job. The results also show that applicant faking behavior resulted in significant rank ordering changes that impacted hiring decisions. Research limitations/implications – One limitation of the study is the exclusion of a job performance criterion measure. Without this measure definitive statements regarding the decay in the criterion validity of the measure cannot be made. While the study demonstrated rank orderin