Me or My Friends? Examining SNS Friend Activity's Impact on Applicant Perceptions

Abstract

Cybervetting continues to be adopted by an increasing number of organizations each year, with approximately 43% of employers using social networking websites (SNSs) to screen job applicants (SHRM, 2016). Yet little attention has been given to how a profilee’s SNS friends influence cybervetter perceptions. As such, the current study examined how friend SNS content impacts perceptions of an applicant, thereby adding to the understanding of judgment mechanisms in cybervetting-based assessment. It was hypothesized that negatively perceived friend content would reduce perceptions of applicant suitability, whereas positively perceived friend content would increase perceptions of applicant suitability. Further, it was expected that by redacting SNS friend content or instructing raters to ignore SNS friend content, there would be higher cross-method agreement between cybervetting-based evaluations and self-reported or test scores of key attributes (i.e., personality, integrity, and cognitive ability). Results indicated that negative friend content coincided with reduced perceptions of applicant suitability when there were no instructions to ignore, but the influence of positive friend content did not differ from neutral friend content or instructions to ignore. Additionally, redacting friend content did not lead suitability perceptions to significantly differ from any other condition. Further, cross-method disagreement existed between cybervetting-based evaluations and traditional scores of the key attributes. However, findings were not so straightforward.