The curse of self-presentation: Looking for career patterns in online CVs

Abstract

Climbing the career ladder to a senior executive position is a long and complex process that, nevertheless, many people are trying to master. Over the last decades, the number of people providing their CVs on professional online social networks, such as LinkedIn is growing. New methods of pattern detection raise the question of whether online CVs provide insights into career patterns and paths. The respective hypothesis is that online CVs map people“s careers and therefore build the ideal data set to detect career patterns. To test this hypothesis, 100.006 online CVs were downloaded and preprocessed. This paper presents initial results of one educational and one internship variable. Whereas a higher degree positively predicts career level, having made an internship negatively relates to career level. These results reveal that rather than objectively mirroring people“s career trajectories, online career platforms provide selective information. The information of online CVs and the respective career level is intermingled, i.e. people with a high career level present different parts of their careers than people on lower levels. Furthermore, self-presentational effects might have an impact. The effect on similar research and possible implications are discussed.