Influence Of Job Applicant's Image On Interviewer's Selection Decision:The Mediating Effect Of Affective Evalution And Rational Evalution

In today's society,one's interview image is closely related to the success or failure of one's job hunting.It can be said that the personal image determines one's career development.In this paper,an in-depth study is conducted on the subject of the image of the job applicants.First of all,the background of the beauty culture in the workplace is studied.Then the content of the job applicant's image is discussed and the determinants are summarized into three dimensions——physical attractiveness,professional dressing and manner & demeanor.Third,some relevant theories are used to analyze the rationality and bias of the kind of image-focused interview respectively and how one's image affects on job seekers themselves.Fourth,after the literature review,this paper puts forward the processing mechanism of the job applicant's image on the interviewer's selection decision(through affective and rational evaluation)and a hypothetical model is constructed.Based on the literatures and social experience,this paper designs a survey questionnaire from the perspective of recruiters to examine the structural dimensions and the content of desired job applicants' interview image.In order to better explore the processing mechanism of the job applicant's image on the interviewer's decision,the path analysis is used to test the hypothetical model of this paper.It is concluded that the effect of three dimensions of job appliacnts' interview image on interview decision is influenced by two mediating variables(affective and rational evaluation).The physical attractiveness has the greatest impact on the interviewer's affective evaluation;the manner & demeanor has the greatest influence on the interviewer's rational evaluation.Comparing the effect of two mediator variables on the interviewer's selection decision,the rational evaluation has a higher influence.The conclusions and implications are:(1)a desired interview image is not equal to physical attractiveness,but also includes professional appearance and manner & demeanor.And the manner & demeanor of the job seekers is the most valued part.Therefore,job seekers must pay more attention to improving their inner beauty.(2)For recruiters,this paper justifies the reasonalble part in their “judging people by appearance” behaviors——their judgment is not just about good-looking or not,a lot of potential information are also inferred.Of course,the irrational part of “judging people by appearance” still needs to be reduced by some control measures.(3)This paper helps job seekers and recruiters to further understand how one's image affects the selection decision,which on the one hand reminds the recruiters to reduce the subjective judgement in the subsequent interviews;on the other hand,job applicants should also learn to manage the rational association of one's image(e.g.one's job potential and personal background information).Finally,this paper summarizes the existing problems and puts forward the future prospects on the subject.