Impression Management for Older and Younger Job Seekers on LinkedIn

June 10, 2021: https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000269

Commentary

This study will investigate impressions of jobs on LinkedIn.

The use of social networking sites for recruiting has become commonplace and this practice can be risky for older job seekers.

Because older job seekers did not grow up using the Internet, they may not be as adept at introducing themselves online as younger job seekers.

The findings show that there are some differences and many similarities between the impression management of younger and older job seekers on LinkedIn profiles.

However, we found that older job seekers receive fewer job offers than younger job seekers, regardless of their impression management efforts. And they also found that this bias was mitigated when older job seekers used only younger-looking profile photos. Thus, online impression management and recruitment now explain the implications of the role of job seeker age.