First impressions at work drive hiring, promotions after forming in less than a minute

To make a good impression at work, it might be better to spend less time polishing your resume and more time honing your communication skills.

That’s according to a large analysis of over 200 studies that shows that the first impressions people make at work are largely based on verbal and nonverbal communication styles, with substantive content — like the experience shown on a resume — accounting for a smaller share of these key impressions.

What’s more, those first impressions, which are often formed in less than a minute, can have a lasting influence in key decisions like mentorship opportunities and promotions weeks and even months later.

The three strongest factors driving first impressions across the studies were communication style, physical appearance and what are known as content cues, or the substance of what’s written and said.

“The single most shocking finding of this study is that content cues were the weakest predictors of first impressions,” said Brian Swider, Ph.D., a professor of business at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study. “So what somebody has said about you, what your resume says, the content of what you say in initial interactions is not as impactful as the other two cues.”

Swider and his collaborators in UF’s Warrington College of Business and T. Brad Harris of HEC Paris published their findings Aug. 3 in the journal Personnel Psychology.

The researchers combined 204 independent samples from 145 studies of first impressions in workplace settings. This meta-analysis allowed them to look across different jobs, countries, education levels and study designs to identify patterns that held up across a wide range of circumstances, rather than relying on findings from any one workplace or experiment.

The analysis found that people tend to form an overall positive or negative impression of someone rather than independently judging individual traits like competence, warmth or trustworthiness. That broad initial judgment can then influence how they interpret later information about the person.

“People want to think that they are making really high-level analytical decisions based on effectively evaluating evidence,” Swider said. “And all of the first impression research says no matter what we try to do, that’s not what’s happening.”

Those judgments also proved durable. Although the influence of first impressions weakened over time, the analysis found they remained associated with how people viewed one another weeks later.

“The impression you form of somebody in the first handful of minutes of meeting them will strongly relate to how you feel about them more than a month later,” Swider said.

That persistence can matter in the workplace because first impressions were tied to both achievement-related outcomes, such as hiring and performance evaluations, and relationship outcomes, including whether people wanted to work with someone or seek their advice.

The findings also point to a challenge for employers trying to keep subjective impressions from influencing consequential decisions. Swider said organizations can’t prevent people from forming quick judgments, but they can limit how much weight those judgments carry by structuring interviews and evaluations and involving multiple people in decisions.

The study cannot show that first impressions cause later workplace outcomes, and the researchers found that their influence varied depending on the setting and how much time had passed. For workers facing a job interview, a new boss or another high-stakes introduction, however, Swider said the research offers a practical lesson: Pay attention to the parts of the interaction you can control.

“What I tell my students is, make as good a first impression as you can. Control what you can,” Swider said. “Do whatever it is you can to pick up those small wins.”