A study on the characteristics of college graduate job seekers who strongly believe unfounded tips on the successful job interview

Abstract

Based on the perspective of Spence(1973)'s signaling theory, this study aimed to find out the unfounded tips on the successful job interview which were pervasive among college graduate job seekers, and to investigate the job seekers' characteristics which make them to strongly believe the unfounded tips. Using data from 120 college graduate job seekers and 77 managers who had experience of selection interview, this study could draw a lot of unfounded job interview tips which showed substantial difference of the perceived effectiveness of interview tips between job seekers and managers. After finding out the unfounded interview tips, this study also investigated the characteristics of job seekers who strongly believe them. The results showed that the degree of believing the unfounded job interview tips was positively related to the strength of formal job search behavior and the job seeking related stress, and negatively to having clear career planning.