The HeUristic: First-Body vs. Third-Body Presentation Impression Effect on Employment Decisions

We address the role of impression on decisions to employ corporate job candidates. Specifically, we focus on the effect of phrasing the job candidate’s CV in the third person (passive voice), as opposed to the first person, on its readers’ impression and decisions regarding the candidate, which we dub the HeUristic. Using the responses of over 2,000 online business media readers, we report that people tend to consider a candidate whose CV is presented in the third person to be more reliable, less self-confident, more suitable for team work, less boastful and, overall, more suitable for the job than a candidate whose CV is formulated in the first person. We find merely weak support for the suggestions that the HeUristic effect may (i) increase with readers’ economics background, and (ii) be more pronounced for male than for female participants. The effect remains significant even after controlling for the participants’ personal characteristics.