But a new study from North Carolina State University shows that those companies may have a fundamental misunderstanding of online behavior and, as a result, may be eliminating desirable job candidates<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Researchers tested 175 study participants to measure the personality traits that companies look for in job candidates, including conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion. The participants were then surveyed on their Facebook behavior, allowing researchers to see which Facebook behaviors were linked to specific personality traits<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The results would likely surprise many corporate human resources officials.<\/p>\n \u201cCompanies often scan a job applicant\u2019s Facebook profile to see whether there is evidence of drug or alcohol use, believing that such behavior means the applicant is not \u2018conscientious,\u2019 or responsible and self-disciplined,\u201d says Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, a professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the study. However, the researchers found that there is no significant correlation between conscientiousness and an individual\u2019s willingness to post content on Facebook about alcohol or drug use<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis means companies are eliminating some conscientious job applicants based on erroneous assumptions regarding what social media behavior tells us about the applicants,\u201d says Will Stoughton, a Ph.D. student at NC State and lead author of the paper.<\/p>\n And companies that are looking for extroverts \u2013 such as those hiring for sales or marketing positions \u2013 may be doing themselves an even worse disservice<\/strong>. The study found that extroverts were significantly more likely to post about drugs or alcohol on Facebook. So companies weeding out those applicants are likely to significantly limit the pool of job candidates who are extroverts.<\/p>\n However, the researchers did find one online indicator strongly correlated to the personality traits that employers look for. Study participants who rated high on both agreeableness and conscientiousness were also very unlikely to \u201cbadmouth\u201d or insult other people on Facebook.<\/p>\n \u201cIf employers plan to keep using social media to screen job applicants, this study indicates they may want to focus on eliminating candidates who badmouth others<\/strong> \u2013 not necessarily those who post about drinking beer,\u201d Stoughton says.<\/p>\n The paper, \u201cBig Five Personality Traits Reflected in Job Applicants\u2019 Social Media Postings,\u201d was published online July 1 in Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking<\/em> and was co-authored by Dr. Adam Meade, an associate professor of psychology at NC State.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the NC State University press release via EurekAlert!: Employers are increasingly using Facebook to screen job applicants and weed out candidates they think have undesirable traits. But a new… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,8],"tags":[165,314,315,32,166,186,218,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14523"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14726,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14523\/revisions\/14726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"meeting](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/meeting-circle-canstockphoto1828283.jpg\")
Employers are increasingly using Facebook to screen job applicants<\/strong> and weed out candidates they think have undesirable traits.<\/p>\n