Effects of the Strategy for Understanding Self-Strength on the Perception of One’s Strongest Trait and the Results of Job Screening

Abstract

In job-hunting situations, people need to convince others that they possess desirable traits suitable for the position that they are applying. Previous studies have revealed that, when deciding whether an individual possesses a desirable trait, actors tend to give credit to their intentions, whereas observers give credit to the actor’s observable actions relative to the actor’s intentions. It was hypothesized that this tendency prevents people from finding out the actual self-strength and convincing others of their self-strengths. This study examined whether focusing on behavioral information relative to introspective information (e.g., intention, motivation) when assessing self-strengths affects the results of job screening. A questionnaire was completed by fourth-grade university students who had engaged in job-hunting (N = 219). The results showed that participants who had placed a higher value on behavioral information (as do observers) tended to be free from bias in assessing self-strengths and had received good results from the screening of their application documents. A discussion of the implications of these findings for job-hunting will follow.