Risky Business: Assessing Personality Through LinkedIn

Abstract

LinkedIn is a widely popular professional networking site across the world, and represents an increasingly used tool in the recruitment process. The platform contains valuable information about potential candidates with regards to their education and work experience, and often more dynamic and relational information than the traditional resume. This study aims to narrow the gap between current practices of inferring candidate characteristics and traits using LinkedIn and the research thereof, by assessing the accuracy of such inferences with regards to personality traits. The sample of raters in this study consisted of people both with and without professional recruitment experience. The results support that it is possible to infer two out of the Big Five personality traits, namely openness to experience and extraversion, and that extraversion can be more accurately inferred than openness to experience. Further, the results suggests that recruitment professionals are not better at judging personality than laypeople. This study highlights the importance of constructing valid and standardized methods for information collection on LinkedIn, to ensure a fair and accurate evaluation of candidates.