Why Narcissists Might Get the Best Jobs

There is a growing body of research that shows that narcissists are quite successful in the workplace. For example, there is a relationship between narcissism and attainment of leadership positions (Paunonen, et al., 2006). Moreover, narcissistic CEOs receive higher pay and compensation than their less narcissistic counterparts (O’Reilly, et al., 2014). But what about narcissism and regular jobs? Do narcissists have an advantage in winning in a job search?

An interesting study explored whether narcissists perform better in job interviews and found that they were indeed more likely to receive higher evaluations (being seen as more “hirable”) of their interview performance (Paulhus, et al., 2013). In short, this suggests that narcissistic individuals are better at winning jobs.

Why is this the case?

These researchers also coded the behaviors of all the applicants in the videotaped interviews. This is what they found.

The more narcissistic applicants engaged in more self-promotion behaviors, such as exaggerating their knowledge or skills. They also were more likely to praise themselves and their accomplishments and abilities. The coders also looked at what they called “ingratiation” behaviors, such as flattering the interviewer, smiling a lot, and using humor.

Why might this be a problem?

Evaluations of candidates in job interviews are fraught with problems and biases. The findings of this study provide an example. Narcissists are more likely to engage in the kinds of behaviors that impress interviewers and feed into their biases. In our own research, we have found that being outgoing, talkative, smiling, and upbeat lead to more positive evaluations of hireability. The problem is that such behaviors may not be predictive of the actual job-related skills of the interviewee. In our research, we looked at both the interviewer’s rating of the applicants’ hireability but we also had human resources professionals watch the videos of the same interviews (they saw a side-view of the interviewer-applicant interactions).

The difference that we found was that the interviewer was much more influenced by the applicants’ outgoing behavior than were the HR pros who were viewing the interviews as “observers.” In other words, the full force of the interviewee’s behaviors was focused on the interviewer. Our HR professionals seemed to be less affected by the ingratiating and self-promotion behaviors of the applicants, while the interviewer, who was also a trained HR professional, was seemingly “captivated” by the applicant’s performance.

The Implications

The relationship between narcissism and actual performance-success as an employee (or as a leader) may be a curvilinear one – an inverted-U relationship – such that a little bit of narcissism is a form of self-confidence that might help the person in the actual job. Too much narcissism (or too little) may not be a good thing for performance as an employee or leader. Another lesson is to be cautious about relying too much on job interviews as a means of evaluating potential employees. A much better strategy is to assess job-related knowledge and skills with validated tests and by focusing on concrete and verifiable indicators of an applicant’s previous job-related accomplishments.