The Big Five model of personality has been adopted as the dominant personality framework for personnel selection, as organizations increasingly try to recruit employees with preferred personality characteristics. However, it should be noted that the type of information about personality that organizations strive to attain before making a prediction on job performance can prove to be relatively worthless if situational factors are not considered. Personality tests are said to have a predictability ceiling of .30, which although useful, still leaves a great deal of variance in people’s behavior unaccounted for. This is because behavior is widely thought to be a function of the joint influence of personality and the situation. Thus, although it is widely believed that adult’s personality is made up of both heredity and environmental factors, it is also moderated by situational conditions. Although a person’s personality is generally stable and consistent, it does change, as different demands of different situations call forth different aspects of one’s personality. The common mistake of placing too much importance on personality traits, with a failure to account for the role of situation factors in affecting behavior, is referred to as the “fundamental attribution error” and can lead to a firm firing an unsuitable applicant.
Thus instead of managers just looking for specific traits when selecting new employees, they should also account for the various situational factors that could influence behavior. One situational factor that should be accounted for is the occupation which is being filled. This is best explained by personality-job fit theory which is based on the notion that there must be a fit between an individual’s personality characteristics, and that person’s occupational environment. The theory argues that job satisfaction is highest, and turnover is lowest, when there is a match between personality and occupation. The main points of this theory are that (1) there do appear to be intrinsic differences in personality among individuals, (2) there are different types of jobs and (3) people who’s job environment is congruent with their personality types should be more satisfied and thus, less likely to resign than people in incongruent occupations.
An even more important situation factor is the specific organization which is doing the recruiting. Personality-organization fit theory argues that people leave organizations that are not compatible with their personalities. Thus, if an organization is characterizes by a constantly changing environment, then it requires employees who are able to readily change tasks, and move fluidly between different teams. Thus, this paper argues that managerial recruiting practices to seek out specific personality types will only be successful if specific situations and work environments are considered.
For instance, hiring a person whom is extraverted might be beneficial to an organization in many respects. For instance, extraversion can be very beneficial in occupations which involve high social interactions such as managerial sales positions and customer service. While it may not make sense to hire an introvert for an auctioneer position, it would also not make sense to recruit an extrovert for a job which doesn’t interact require social interactions, like an assembly line worker, a proofreader, or a research position which requires an employee to work alone from a cubicle. Similarly, if an organization is in the process of spreading its culture, then extraverts might be useful for culture transmission. However, if an organization doesn’t benefit for such interactions, then having extraverts can potentially lead to more than desired socializing in the office, and less work being done. Similarly, organizations should be wary that hiring too many extraverts can potentially result in groupthink, which is undesirable if an organization prides itself on thought diversity. In such cases, organizations may be better off hiring introverts to fill their needs.
Agreeableness can also be beneficial to some professions, especially ones that require interpersonal facilitation, such as customer service. In addition, agreeableness is desirable in organization which emphasize team working, and where interactions with others is necessary. Similarly, if an organization’s culture emphasizes employees taking a more passive role and agreeing with management (yes-men), then agreeableness can be beneficial. However, if an organization’s culture emphasizes conflict for the purposes of coming up with superior solutions to problems, as would be the case with a problem solving teams, then scoring low on this might instead be desired. Similarly, if the organization wants employees to be competitive and aggressive, as would be the case with many law firms, then having someone with low scores in agreeableness is also desirable.
Consciousness is arguably the most coveted trait by managers, as studies consistently indicate that it is one of the most valid predictors of performance for most jobs, second only to general intelligence. On the whole, employees who are dependable, reliable, careful, thorough, able to plan, organized, hardworking, persistent and achievement oriented tend to have higher job performance in most, if not all occupations. Similarly, employees who score high in conscientious often develop superior job knowledge because they are prone to exert greater levels of effort on their jobs than people who score low on conscientiousness. Consistent with these finding, evidence also finds a relatively strong and consistent relationship between conscientiousness and organizational citizenship behavior, while other studies have found that conscientiousness influences performance through its effects on such motivational variables as performance expectancies, self-efficacy, and goal setting. Thus, conscientiousness has emerged as the most valid of the Big Five, and it is therefore understandable that so much interest is placed on this trait during employee selection. However, while global conscientiousness might be a fairly good predictor of performance in a general work setting, conscientiousness might not be as valid when applied to specific situations. For instance, conscientious employees tend to be well-organized and goal oriented, which can be beneficial to professions such as accounting, or secretarial work. However, such traits tend to make employees rigid, and less compatible with unpredictable jobs environments such as firefighting, or in work environments which emphasize creativity, such as jazz musicians. Thus, conscientious people may be best suited for predictable work, and not as compatible with jobs where it is not possible to always plan and organize ahead of time. In addition, someone who is high on consciousness may be incompatible with an organizations culture. For instance, if an organization has an underlying culture which employees do not work up to their maximum potential, then a conscientious person who is hard working and gives it his all might develop a reputation as a “rate-buster”, and might ultimately be forced to leave due to not fitting in with coworkers. In addition, according to Festinger, since people do not like the state of being in disagreement with co-workers, such incompatibility might result in that employee changing his behavior to move into line with his coworkers.
Emotional stability can be beneficial to an organization to the extent that being calm, secure, well-adjusted, and low in anxiety can have a positive impact on job performance. For instance, for customer service jobs, and managerial positions, it may be beneficial to hire someone high in emotional stability because emotional outbursts are oftentimes seen as undesirable in organizations, and may be distracting to one’s co-workers or clientele. However, in professions which employees work alone, then an employees emotional stability may not play a role in job performance. Furthermore, in professions located in the arts, such as painters or musicians, emotional instability may be even desired because such sporadic feelings can potentially inspire someone to produce diverse pieces of works. Such logic would explain why some of the world’s greatest artists and musicians have historically been described as mad and emotionally instable
Openness to experience can also yield mixed results. Hiring candidates who score high on this trait can be beneficial to jobs which require their employees to constantly upgrade their skills through training programs, or frequent job rotation. Similarly, in jobs which require constant traveling, as is the case with business men, UN officials, or performers in the circus, then such a trait might be desired. On the other hand, when hiring for jobs where the job environment stays stable over time and thus requires no additional training or traveling, then hiring a person who scores high on openness to experience might lead to lower job satisfaction and high job turnover.
A reason why employers may choose to pursue personality types is to increase the probability that people will fit in with their co-workers thereby resulting in cohesion, and increased job satisfaction. This line of reasoning is consistent with Bryne’s similarity attraction theory which suggests that people prefer similarity in their interactions. Job satisfaction is it thought is beneficial for organizations because job satisfaction has been shown to increase commitment, which has positive association with absenteeism, turnover, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. However, pursuing personality traits also results in less deep level diversity which can be undesirable, especially when organizations implement work-groups. This is because too much personality similarity can result in groupthink which can adversely affect decision making by not allowing for healthy consideration of various perspectives, and which is a reason why studies consistently support the conclusion that heterogeneous groups perform more effectively than homogeneous groups.
However, the possibility should also be explored that there may not be a causal relationship of personality leading to performance, but instead there may be an intermediate factor. For instance, according to Hurtz and Donavon (2000), motivation may act as an intervening variable between personality and performance. Thus, personality might not directly predict performance, but might instead make a person more prone to engage in behaviors such as self-efficacy or goal-setting, which in turn influence performance.
Thus, although potentially useful, it should be noted that pursuing specific personality types is not the end all, be all predictor for job performance as various dynamic issues operate with individuals at work. For starters, people oftentimes self-select their job and working environment, thereby reducing the variability of individual personality traits in particular jobs. For example, introverts oftentimes try to avoid people-oriented jobs.
In addition, when individuals’ personality traits are not compatible with their job, they oftentimes adapt aspects of their working style to their requirements of the job, often quite soon after they start a job. Similarly, organization may facilitate this adaptation through primary socialization (i.e. induction, mentoring, training), to adjust individual employee behaviors to the pattern of work behaviors acceptable within the organization. Thus, employees oftentimes try to adapt to the jobs to which they are assigned, and can therefore develop traits that an organization covets. For example, if an introvert is hired in a people-oriented job, he/she attempt to be more social in it.
Individuals also change various aspects of the job they perform thereby making it more compatible with their personality type. For instance, if an introvert is hired for customer service, then he/she may choose to deal with customers indirectly, through perhaps E-Mail or the post, rather through direct means such as the phone or in person. Thus it is possible to change job characteristics in order to increase compatibility between ones personality and their job.
It can also be argued that today, since jobs evolve and change so quickly with new technology, markets, and global requirements while individuals remain in it, that it might not make sense to seek out certain personality types because the long term needs of the organization are not known. Thus, an individual carefully selected and trained for a job at time A may or may not be suited to do that job at time B.
And finally, regardless of the personality being sought, the effect of personality on performance depends on the work environment. This is consistent with Furnham’s assertion that personality is more likely to make a difference on organizational performance in weak environments. On the other hand, in highly structured situations where there are strong cues and clear expectations for certain behaviors, then those behaviors will be elicited regardless of employee personality. Thus, the impact of personality is insignificant in such situations.
Personality tests are widely used as a tool for employee selection by a growing number of organizations. This is because studies consistently show that personality plays a significant role in organizational performance and thus, should not be ignored by organizations. However, it is also important for the organization to not depend solely on personality dimensions for desired outcomes, as predictability depends on several contingency factors such as the occupation, the type of organization, position, and overall situation. Only when such situational factors are considered will organizations be able to get the most benefit out of personality tests as an accurate predictor of job performance.
