When great places to work aren't for everyone: How top employer awards can backfire for narcissistic applicants

Abstract

Drawing on signaling theory, the current experimental study (N = 593) investigated the influence of top employer awards on the connections between the full spectrum of narcissistic personality features (i.e., agentic, antagonistic, neurotic, and communal) and perceived company prestige. The results of our experiment show that employer awards enhance prestige perceptions and that all narcissism facets are positively related to perceptions of prestige. However, the positive associations between narcissistic personality features and company prestige were less pronounced in the award condition than in the no-award condition. Our study contributes to the recruitment and employer branding literature by demonstrating that, while employer awards generally enhance an organization’s prestige, they may not do so for individuals with particular personality features.

Keywords

• narcissism
• top employer awards
• company prestige
• recruitment
• organizational attraction