A confident job applicant admires his reflection while walking ahead of an orderly line of candidates toward an office.

Job ads asking for “outside the box” thinkers draw in more narcissists

In four experiments, narcissistic job seekers rated postings full of “Rule-Bender” phrases such as “thinks outside the box” and “results-oriented” as a better fit, and professional recruiters reached for that language more for high-growth firms and when aggressive financial reporting would pay off.