COMMENTARIES The Trouble with Applicant Impression Management

Impression management or self-presentation refers to the behaviors used by individuals to control the impressions they make on others. This perspective views much of social behavior as being something like an advertising campaign that individuals conduct on their own behalf, in the course of which they seek to highlight their virtues and minimize their deficiencies. There can be few, if any, situations that bring such behaviors into sharper focus than the selection interview. (Fletcher, “Impression ” 269) The consequences of applicant impression management (AIM) are disputed. From the applicant’s perspective, impression management (IM) denotes nothing more than the persuasive skills interviewers expect of successful candidates. Seeking to help applicants please interviewers, texts and training manuals urge interviewees to prac-tice various IM tactics (Kirkwood and Ralston, “Ethics”). We agree that such counsel seems well-grounded because research shows it tends to pay off (Fletcher, “Relationship”). Recently, David Gilmore and Gerald Ferris found that interviewers rated videotaped appli-cants who used high levels of IM tactics as more likely to perform well on the job; interviewers were also more likely to recommend hiring these applicants. Cynthia Stevens and Amy Kristof reported that “IM tactics significantly predicted interviewers ’ evaluations and whether applicants later obtained site visits. ” Thus, applicants might say, “Interviewers expect and reward skillful IM by job seekers. Inter-viewers manage impressions, too, as they try to recruit us. They can Authors ’ Note: We thank the editor of JBTC and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on improving this article