This study investigates the impact of social media usage on the career outcomes of senior executives at S&P 1500 firms.
This study integrates signaling, social capital and human capital theories, and adopts a difference-in-differences analysis, enhanced by a novel deep learning-based method. It examines how senior executives' impression management (IM) activities on social media influence their career outcomes.
Empirical results reveal that senior executives' IM in the form of establishing a Twitter account and engaging in visibility-enhancing activities (i.e. frequent work-related tweeting, hashtagging, mentioning and receiving a high number of likes and retweets) can significantly improve their career outcomes. In addition, as a type of visual IM, the strategic use of visual IM through profile photos also plays a critical role in attracting employers' attention.
Senior executives, especially those with low public visibility, can leverage social media to build a personal brand and use IM strategies to boost career prospects. Employers and executive recruiters may incorporate social media content into candidate evaluations.
This work contributes to the literature by systematically examining how senior executives utilize both textual and visual IM strategies on social media to influence career prospects.
