An indispensable tool
LinkedIn has become part of our everyday life, an indispensable instrument to know more about the other without physically “interrupting” their lives. We check and we also filter via LinkedIn. Yet, despite its popularity at work and its potential as a selection tool, little is known about its capacity to offer useful information for workplace decisions. This is the reason why we embarked on a study to understand which indicators in LinkedIn, if any, signal the personality traits of candidates.
And why did we focus on personality traits? Because there is a substantial body of evidence that personality traits matter at work. For example, the trait “conscientiousness” is positively associated with job performance. Thus, hiring conscientious people makes sense as it increases the chances that they succeed in their jobs. Wouldn’t it be informative if we could know what cues to focus on when checking a LinkedIn profile, i.e. those cues that shed light on a candidate’s true personality?!
So which personality traits did we examine? We used the most widely used and accepted model of personality, known as the big five model (McCrae & John, 1992) comprised of: openness to experience (tendency to be curious, appreciating divergent thinking), conscientiousness (tendency to be organized, achievement-striving, rule-oriented), extraversion (tendency to be assertive and energized by social interactions), agreeableness (tendency to be altruistic, modest, cooperative), and neuroticism (tendency to experience negative emotions such as fear, sadness, depression). We also identified 33 LinkedIn indicators to serve as signals of personality traits. Our sample consisted of 607 LinkedIn profiles from hospitality graduates, and this is what we found.