Looked over or overlooked? Prescreening decisions and postinterview evaluations.

Past research indicates that interviewers' initial impressions of job applicants affect their subsequent evaluations. These findings, however, come either from naturalistic studies that do not control for the applicants' qualifications or from laboratory experiments that cannot assess what occurs in real interviews. The present study examined preinterview impressions and postinterview evaluations in the context of prescreening decisions. Job applicants who were prescreened into interviews were judged more favorably by recruiters than applicants who were not prescreened. Because many applicants were prescreened by some organizations and not by others, the authors were able to control for applicant qualifications and show that the same individuals were rated more favorably when prescreened than when not prescreened. Finally, the results ruled out the possibility that findings simply reflect accurate preinterview assessments of applicant-job fit.