There is a general consensus that a respondent performs four steps in answering a close-ended question: comprehending the question, retrieving from memory the information necessary to form an answer, judging the information retrieved, and selecting an answer from among the response options. Respondents who carefully employ all four steps are called optimizers. However, a survey question can be answered by shifting response strategy using satisfacting schemes. Longer response times usually indicate more complex and engaged processing. Respondents who are highly motivated are more likely to be optimizers and thus spend more time responding. On the contrary, less motivated respondents tend to be satisficers and would be likely to spend less time. In this study we compared response latencies of job incumbentsversus job applicants on a personality assessment administered via the web. The median item response time of job applicants was consistently greater than of the job incumbents.