Relationships Between Candidate Self-Monitoring, Perceived Personality, and Selection Interview Outcomes

Abstract

A study into the relationships between candidate self-monitoring ability, interviewer perceptions of candidate personality, and interviewer outcome decisions in the context of actual graduate recruitment interviews (n = 130) is presented. Detailed psychometric norm data is also reported on the Lennox and Wolfe (1984) revised Self-Monitoring (RS-M) scale, together with the results of confirmatory factor analyses into the factor structure of this measure. It was found that candidate self-monitoring ability was only moderately and nonsignificantly related to interviewer outcome evaluations, and that self-monitoring was generally uncorrelated with the positiveness of recruiter impressions of candidate personality. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a two correlated factor structure for the RS-M scale, in accordance with the original authors' formulation, provided the most parsimonious fit. Norm data for the RS-M scale is reported for this sample of British graduates, including item statistics, item to subscale, item to scale correlations, and internal reliability coefficients. Implications for future research into candidate impression management, self-monitoring, interviewer decision making, and the practical implications arising from these findings are discussed.