Although much of our lives online can be seen as posturing or performance, there are some indications that there’s no hiding the real you. In a new experiment, a professor and two students rated college kids based on a quick look at their Facebook pages, and those scores just happened to match up with the social networkers’ real-world job performance. And don’t even bother blaming the keg stands.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
After spending roughly 10 minutes perusing each profile, including photos, wall posts, comments, education and hobbies, the raters answered a series of personality-related questions, such as “Is this person dependable?” and “How emotionally stable is this person?”
Six months later, the researchers matched the ratings against employee evaluations from each of the students’ supervisors. They found a strong correlation between job performance and the Facebook scores for traits such as conscientiousness, agreeability and intellectual curiosity.
Travel, friends, and hobbies were seen as positives by the raters, and even partying pictures could demonstrate that the profile-owners were “extroverted and friendly.” So red Solo cups might just be a symbol of potential — keep telling yourself that.
