In today’s recruitment practices, the use of social networking sites (SNS) like LinkedIn is omnipresent. In fact, SNS have become the main medium through which organizations advertise jobs, recruit, and screen future employees. Likewise, millions of job seekers use SNS to present their skills and make themselves attractive to organizations.
This practice may put some job seekers in a disadvantaged position. Navigating SNS and creating an attractive and professional-looking profile on LinkedIn requires specific skills and knowledge which may be a barrier for those individuals who have not grown up with the Internet or social media. Indeed, not having grown up with the Internet and encountering social media later in adulthood often goes along with a lower skill level when navigating and actively using SNS but also with more skepticism and uneasiness about online self-presentation in general. Therefore, older job seekers may be less proficient in creating and promoting their LinkedIn profiles than younger job seekers, which may in turn lower their chances of employment.
We analyzed how younger and older job seekers present themselves on LinkedIn and how successful their presentation styles were for receiving job offers through LinkedIn. Younger job seekers who participated in our study were in their late twenties, so-called digital natives who were “born into a wired world.” Social media are at the heart of the way members of this age group communicate, learn, work, play, and shop. Older job seekers who participated in our study were in their fifties. Thus, they were in their 40s when the major SNS like LinkedIn and Facebook were launched. Moreover, they were not exposed to computers or the Internet until late adolescence or young adulthood.
First, we analyzed our participants’ LinkedIn profiles in detail and compared them. We focused on those profile sections that recruiters pay most attention to, namely the “about” section, the skills and competencies section, the network connections, the recommendations, and the profile photo. Then, we analyzed how the way older and younger job seekers presented themselves in these sections was related to the number of job offers they had received.
The Good News
The comparison of profiles revealed many similarities and few differences between younger and older job seekers. For example, younger and older job seekers mentioned about the same number of professional qualities in the “about” sections, using about the same number of words. Moreover, they mentioned roughly the same number and type of soft and technical skills in the “skills” section and had a similar number of recommendations. And their profile photos were perceived as relatively professional.
The few differences that emerged were in favor of older job seekers’ profiles: Older job seekers had larger networks, meaning more connections, and more skill endorsements than younger job seekers. And they used profile pictures with more advantageous cutouts, showing more of the face in relation to the body.
In sum, these comparisons show that older job seekers are just as proficient or, in some respects, even more proficient in creating and promoting their profile on LinkedIn. This observation is encouraging because it refutes concern that older adults are less versed in using professional SNS.
The Bad News
However, looking at employment outcomes was less encouraging. Irrespective of profile qualities, older job seekers received significantly fewer job offers through LinkedIn than younger job seekers. That is, despite comparable—or in some respects better—online profiles, older job seekers did not receive comparable employment opportunities. Older job seekers were better connected and received more skill endorsements, showing that other professionals deemed it worthwhile to connect with them and give them credit for their competencies. Yet, older job seekers were still disadvantaged at recruitment.
Only one aspect helped counteract the age discrimination: When older job seekers used a profile photo in which they looked younger than they actually were. In other words, the younger the older job seekers were on their profile photo, they more likely they were to receive job offers through LinkedIn.
In sum, age discrimination persists at employment, including in the online realm. Furthermore, age discrimination is evident in the powerful impact of the job seeker’s photo. In spite of their strong qualities, older job seekers received fewer employment opportunities than younger job seekers, and only having a younger-looking photo helped compensate for the bias. Thus, older job seekers’ older looks on their profile photo played an important role in explaining the fact that they received fewer employment opportunities.
These findings have practical implications. While photos have been banned from classical resumes for good reasons, they have remarkably found a way back into the recruitment process through SNS. Our results imply that it is time to also ban them from SNS. The absence of profile photos may also help increase recruiters’ attention to the specific content of the profiles and hence to information that is more relevant for finding the right person for the job. Our finding that older job seekers are just as proficient in crafting their professional online personas as younger job seekers is particularly encouraging. It implies that the use of SNS is not per se an obstacle and hence does not create an unfair disadvantage for older age cohorts. Thus, banning profile photos from SNS may be an important step forward in transforming the use of SNS in online recruitment into an age-fair practice.
For Further Reading
Krings, F., Gioaba, I., Kaufmann, M., & Zebrowitz, L. (2021). Older and younger job seekers’ impression management on LinkedIn: Similar strategies, different outcomes. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 20, 61-74. https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000269
Kaufmann, M., Krings, F., Zebrowitz, L. & Sczesny, S. (2017). Age bias in selection decisions: The role of facial appearance and fitness impressions. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2065. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02065
Franciska Krings is a Full Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Lausanne. She studies how diversity affects the way people behave in organizations, particularly how stereotypes influence personnel decision making as well as how to combat such biases.
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