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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.

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.

Another applicant offered a more humorous take on the same anecdote: "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-promotion.

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 investors.

“Only when self-promotion was coupled with self-enhancing humor did it positively predict success in high-stakes pitches," researchers found.

Halevy warns that humorbragging isn’t guaranteed success in every situation or for everyone due to various factors including cultural context and individual differences such as race or gender.

Still, Halevy suggests considering humorbragging as part of one's communication strategy: "We want many tools in our communication toolbox," he says.