A Little “Humorbragging” Could Help You Land Your Next Job

Two job seekers apply to be a sales representative. They have similar names, educations, skills, and levels of experience. But one of them adds a little extra to his resume. “I have a proven track record of turning caffeine input into productivity output,” he writes. “The more coffee you can provide, the more output I will produce.”

Is the joke cringey? Definitely. But it also worked. This applicant’s personal website got three times more traffic than a serious competitor’s and was contacted nearly 1.5 times more frequently by recruiters.

This experiment, described in a recent paper by Stanford Graduate School of Business organizational behavior professor Nir Halevy, is an example of the power of “humorbragging” — coupling self-confidence with a little humor. With his coauthors, Jieun Pai of Imperial College London and Eileen Chou of the University of Virginia, Halevy demonstrates that humorbragging can be an easy and effective way for job seekers to distinguish themselves in a crowded field.

“We’re excited about this because it feels very attainable,” Halevy says. It’s not difficult to inject a little humor into your biography or resume, but that can lead to a meaningful increase in your chances of getting hired. “It’s just a small effort, but the payoff could be huge,” he says.

Humorbragging solves a basic but complicated conundrum for job applicants. When you apply for a job, you want to show how qualified and competent you are. But you also want to come across as pleasant to work with. Those two qualities sometimes seem at odds with each other: How can you present yourself as competent and likable? The researchers propose that humorbragging allows people to show off their skills while simultaneously coming across as agreeable and nice to work with. “There’s an art to it,” Halevy says. “You can’t be going for self-effacing humor if you’re trying to look competent, and you don’t want to insult other people when you want the attention to focus on you.”

Importantly, a humorbrag is not the same as a humblebrag. Humblebragging averages two opposites: You’re being both modest and self-promoting at the same time. Humorbragging doesn’t involve this contradiction. Instead, it communicates two different dimensions of your personality: You’re funny but also confident. “Humorbragging is a compound,” Halevy says. “I’m going to talk about an accomplishment but add another aspect of my personality.”

Halevy and his coauthors tested their theory across several situations. There was the overcaffeinated resume test, which showed humorbragging significantly increased an applicant’s chances of being contacted by recruiters.

Making Sharks Laugh

Next, they investigated whether humorbragging works because it makes people seem more warm and friendly. They had over 100 undergraduate students read transcripts from a job interview for a baker. When the interviewer asks about the applicant’s proudest moment, one applicant offers a straightforward reply about baking a soccer ball–shaped cake for a little boy’s birthday. The candidate proudly says that he received “a huge tip” from the happy child’s parents: “It was the biggest tip the bakery has ever seen, and no one else received more since.”

Another applicant offered a more humorous take on the same anecdote. Instead of bragging that they received a giant tip, this candidate concluded the story by saying: “I am just glad that I only had to make the soccer ball, not actually kick one.” The study participants said they found this humorbragging baker more likable and more competent than the baker who only relied on self-promoting.

To see how humorbragging fared in comparison with other kinds of humor, the researchers examined entrepreneurs’ pitches on the popular TV competition show Shark Tank. They found that when contestants coupled self-promotion with other forms of humor — say, self-deprecating or ingratiating humor — it did not significantly affect their likelihood of getting an offer from the investors. “Only when self-promotion was coupled with self-enhancing humor, it positively predicted success in high-stakes pitches to investors,” the researchers found. The appeal of humorbragging over other forms of humor also held in an online survey of 400 people who looked at responses to interview questions.

Halevy warns that humorbragging isn’t a golden ticket to a job offer. “Humor is risky and it can land in a problematic way,” he says. “It’s an open question whether humorbragging works the same way for everyone in all situations. It probably doesn’t.” He recommends testing out humorbrags in low-pressure, low-risk situations to see how they land in a particular context.

He also notes that this study didn’t test the effects of race or gender on humorbragging’s effectiveness. Another complication is that humor and hiring practices are highly dependent on cultural context. For example, other research has found that Canadian companies prefer hiring more self-promotional candidates while in Switzerland more modest applicants fare better.

Still, Halevy says people should consider humorbragging as a technique for managing how they present themselves. “We want to have a lot of tools in our communication toolbox,” he says. Humorbragging is fun for applicants and it’s nice for recruiters and interviewers, too — who doesn’t want an unexpected smile? What’s more, the potential rewards of humorbragging far outweigh the effort required. “The barriers to using this tool are very, very low,” Halevy says. “If you could just add one line to your CV and improve your chances, you should do it.”