The Role of Personality Traits in Predicting Future Job Performance - Article Example

The Role of Personality Traits in Predicting Future Job Performance There are various ways in which the perfect candi can be obtained for a particular job. Interviews, psychological testing, and practical examinations are just some of these effective ways. In each of this method however, the goal is always to see if the particular individual’s personality will be a good match to the job that he will be assigned to. In so doing, the person can be expected to perform well on the job and pose numerous advantages for the company with his productivity. To prove this point however, some studies need to be explored with special focus on personality traits and how they can be used as predictors of future job performance. Thompson (2005) in particular reviewed past literature about personality on the job and found out that proactive personality tends to boost job performance. This has been influenced by the employee’s interaction with other individuals as well as the degree of self-motivation or initiative that they exhibit. The research was conducted among 126 employees with a 1:1 proportion with their supervisors. Data was obtained by sending out survey questionnaires to randomly selected alumni of business schools and their respective supervisors. Out of the 2,718 letters containing questionnaires, the ones who responded yielded a number of 202 from the alumni and 126 from the supervisors. Proactive personality, network building, organizational initiative taking and performance were the areas appraised by questionnaire. A factor analysis was used. The path model that placed a vital mediating role on network building between proactive personality and job performance was also tested using the Structural Equation Model (Thompson, 2005). Analysis of the data gathered and presented confirmed the existence of a connection between being proactive and performing well on the job. In particular, a proactive personality trait is a good predictor of the individual’s implementation of his initiative in the organization. Individuals with proactive personality are typically those who try to seek for solutions to organizational concerns at their own level even if it is already beyond what has been stated in their job description (Thompson 2005). This implies that employees who deal with the problems in a positive manner are able to carry out their tasks well in comparison to those who would just complain over administrative shortcomings. There are even those who will go out of their way to plan out and impose major programs that will address the needs of the organization. This kind of proactive attitude allows employees to go back and focus on their tasks while the administration is also able to work on the more pressing concerns after other areas have already been covered by the proactive employees. Because of the strategy employed by the researcher of including supervisors and their perceptions of their subordinates, the study also shed light on how an employee’s proactive personality affects his supervisor’s comments and outlook of the individual. The study has highlighted that indeed there is a relationship between proactive personality and the supervisor’s positive ratings. Since performance assessments are mostly used as a basis for promoting an employee, then this study results may imply that positive evaluations can further motivate employees with a proactive personality to perform better in order to get a good climb in the career ladder. Another noteworthy study that explored the role of personality traits in predicting job performance is the one conducted by Benson and Campbell (2007). The study is fueled not only to expand the knowledge base gathered in past works, but also because the researchers believe that leadership is a salient element in the effectiveness of organizations that it can be used to predict how well or how inferior an employee will do his job requirements. The researchers hypothesized that the presence of negative traits such as being overly critical of a subordinate’s work, indecisiveness in the face of two equally gratifying options, and having angry paroxysms during stressful times, have an adverse effect on leadership performance (Benson & Campbell, 2007). Particularly since leadership is tantamount to influence, then the aforementioned behaviors may affect a leader’s control over his subordinates. The researchers made use of 2 different groups of leaders and managers in this study, utilizing different self-report measures for each group. The findings of the study are quite interesting. It was found that the characteristics of a good leader included a high self-esteem, ambition, and the ability to take risks (Benson & Campbell, 2007). While at the surface these qualities may be a bit aggressive, they can prove to be beneficial in running the organization. This is because these types of employees are typically the ones who can be trusted to push themselves beyond their limits and achieve more in short periods of time. Another organizational advantage that leadership potentials ultimately produce pertains to the amount of creativity and innovation that they can bring to the company. Needless to say, these persons with strong personality traits are ultimately the ones who rise in the ranks and are assigned to take charge of a group of people (Benson & Campbell, 2007). These findings can further assist an institution in its search for those with budding leadership abilities and those who are better placed in a subordinate position. However, the same characteristics cannot be displayed to the extreme that they already tend to be abusive. These leaders should also be constantly monitored to ensure that they become overly confident that they will tend to manipulate other people and see themselves as the ones who are always right to the point of ignoring other’s productive opinion.      Meanwhile, a study by Kamdar and Dyne (2007) likewise involves some amount of leadership but with emphasis on social interactions as well. More specifically, the study explored the mutual effects of social exchanges and the individual personality traits called conscientiousness and agreeableness on the implementation of one’s responsibilities in the work place. Task performance in this sense refers to work productivity. Some hypotheses were formulated to address the study’s statement of the problem.      These hypotheses were tested by making 230 engineers, their supervisors and their peers answer research questions. After being subjected to statistical measures and validity, results showed that conscientiousness is positively related to task performance, helping supervisors and coworkers. Typically, conscientiousness is exhibited in terms of dependability, responsibility, motivation, and being plan –oriented (Mount & Barrick as cited in Kamdar & Dyne, 2007). Thus, if a prospective employee is able to display a high degree of conscientiousness as indicated by interviews and other psychological measures then that person is most likely to make his job a serious business. Highly conscientious individuals are self-driven that they do not even have to be pushed using various motivating strategies to perform their job well. These are those who feel satisfied when they have seen the completion of their work with excellent quality and timely speed. These results suggest that if an organization would want employees who will stay with them based on intrinsic motivations and not outside rewards such as monetary benefits, then these are the kind personality traits they should look for in the individual. On the other hand, the second hypothesis was also supported so that when an employee has high interpersonal skills, then he tends to help the people in her immediate surrounding and most especially in the workplace. The study also established a positive relationship between task performance and leader to member interactions. When a supervisor caters to the needs and supervises well the employees, then the employee has greater productivity.   Simply put, agreeableness and conscientiousness are factors that create a social environment conducive for productivity. The relationships of colleagues to colleagues and supervisors to supervisees, and vice-versa as the case may be, have a very great impact on efficiency. These attitudes should be present, and if not, cultivated in employees such that collaboration will be easier and positive results and organizational or departmental goals will be achieved. A company or institution should also pay much attention to the relationship of the people employed. Their relationship should be aligned with their goals and mission-vision. If neglected, problems once considered trivial may balloon and undermine the very foundation of the organization.        In the meantime, Zimmerman (2008) believed that there has been too much emphasis on outside factors in predicting the likelihood of an employee quitting on his job. As such, he made a study that explored the effect of the individual’s personality on the turnover rates of various organizations. It was hypothesized that the personality trait conscientiousness is likely to influence the individual not to resign from his current job because he or she will feel a certain obligation to the company. The same individual will tend to think twice about quitting and will typically decide in favor of the organization more than his own satisfactions. Moreover, it was also hypothesized that the personality trait extraversion gives an individual a positive outlook on the job that he is less likely to leave the institution despite the odds (Zimmerman, 2008). The same is expected to be true with other factors such as emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness to experience. The results of the study indicated, that indeed the individual’s personality is a great predictor of how long he will intend to stay on the job and consequently affect turnover situations (Zimmerman, 2008). It is thus recommended that in order to minimize the cost of having to hire and train new individuals constantly, any organization should make personality traits a part of the decision-making process. This further implies that if the person has a high state of emotional stability then it is less likely for him to change his mind everyday and make plans about transferring to the next job opportunity available. Meanwhile, if a person has a strong sense of conscientiousness then he is less likely to solidify his plan of quitting his job because he will think more about the good of others than thinking about his own job satisfaction. However, the opposite is true for a prospective employee who has a high level of openness to experience. This is because Zimmerman’s (2008) study has confirmed the research made by Hogan (as cited in Zimmerman, 2008) that the same individuals will tend to look for greener pastures or new opportunities just to satisfy their sense of inquisitiveness. In the long run, making use of personality tests that measure these types of personality tests can prove to be useful in finding the right candidate who will tend to maintain a long-term relationship with his employers. In all these studies, it is quite evident that assertive personality traits as indicated by a sense of initiative and leadership can be relied upon to foresee how an individual will perform in a future career. Similarly, interpersonal characteristics as indicated by the extraversion and agreeableness factors provide amounts of job satisfaction that encourage individuals to be productive. The most promising of these traits however is self-motivation because it doesn’t seem to pose any danger of employee turnover but instead implies dependability on the job and loyalty to the company. References Benson, M., & Campbell, J. (2007). To be or not to be, linear: An expanded representation of personality and its relationship to leadership performance. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 15, 233-249.  Kamdar, D., & Dyne, L. (2007). The joint effects of personality and workplace social exchange relationships in predicting task performance and citizenship performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 5, 1286-1298. Thompson, J. (2005). Proactive personality and job performance: A social capital perspective. Journal of Applied Psycholog,. 5, 1011-1017. Zimmerman, R. (2008). Understanding the impact of personality traits on individuals’ turnover decisions: A meta-analytic path model. Personnel Psychology, 61, 309–348. Read More