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Job interview process favours narcissistic candidates: study

Job interview process favours narcissistic candidates: study

The narcissist. If you’ve ever worked with someone with this particular personality trait, you already know how annoying he or she can be.

This is the person who boasts all day long about their a-ma-zing accomplishments, only to be surpassed by some other incredible feat of their own doing.

So obnoxious. It makes you wonder how on earth they were ever hired in the first place.

The thing about narcissists is they don’t initially come across that way. In fact, a new study out of the University of British Columbia suggests this uber-confident personality type is so appealing, at least at first, that narcissists stand a much better chance at winning over the boss during a job interview than candidates who are more modest about their accomplishments.

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Del Paulhus, a University of British Columbia psychology professor and lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, said a job interview is one of the few social situations where narcissistic behaviours actually create a positive impression.

These aren’t the personality-disorder narcissists you will find in a psychology textbook. These are your every-day braggarts who insist on being the centre of attention.

They do well in first-time encounters because they feel comfortable in new settings and with new people.

“They engage with other people. They tell jokes,” said Paulhus in an interview with Yahoo Canada Finance.

“It is just the right profile that is required for job interviews. You do need to draw attention to yourself, you do need to brag,” he said.

In this case, researchers used questionnaires to measure levels of narcissism before placing study participants in job-interview scenarios.

Videotapes of the interviews were later scored by a team of raters. Narcissists tended to talk about themselves, make eye contact, joke around and ask the interviewers more questions.

Cultural bias at play?

As an unexpected bi-product of the experiment, researchers found what Paulhus called “an indirect cultural bias”, particularly against people who identified themselves as East Asian.

The study found participants of Japanese, Chinese and Korean heritage exhibited lower levels of narcissism, and were less likely to receive “definitely hire” ratings as a result.

“We found even when Asians were doing the rating, they found the western-style (narcissistic behaviour) was more appealing. The raters were more likely to say that is the person you want to hire,” Paulhus said.

Queenie Choo, CEO of SUCCESS, an immigration and settlement services organization based in Vancouver, said it’s too broad a stroke to determine from the study that the job-interview process in Canada is fraught with subtle discrimination and that Asian applicants are facing an uphill battle for recognition of their talents.

Though admittedly modest about her own accomplishments, Choo believes firmly immigrants, no matter where they may come from, have as much opportunity to land a job as anyone else.

A lack of Canadian work experience is the single biggest factor keeping immigrants from achieving their professional goals, Choo said.

Beyond that, anyone heading into an interview needs to put in the homework required to land the job. That means researching the company you want to work for, grasping the specifics of the industry language and having the education and experience to backup their qualifications for the job.

“It’s important you understand the social, economic and political environment so that when asked questions you are able to answer appropriately, intelligently and professionally regardless of the country of origin or race that you are,” Choo said.

Paulhus said the study contains important lessons for interviewer and interviewee alike.

Notably, candidates should engage with an interviewer while continuing to self-promote, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel.

And those in charge of hiring should look beyond the fluff and assess individual qualifications and a candidate’s potential long-term fit in the organization.

As for that narcissist? In a separate, but connected study, Paulhus found it takes about seven meetings for that initial charm to wear thin.

“People get tired of them after awhile,” he said.