Career management strategies: the role of personality

Abstract

Relatively little is known about individual differences which predispose individuals to use particular career strategies. Recently, Turban and Dougherty (1994) presented intriguing evidence suggesting that personality is related to proactivity in seeking out mentoring relationships, one aspect of career management. This paper extends and expands on this exploratory work by examining whether personality, as assessed within the "Big Five" framework (Goldberg, 1993), relates to a multi-dimensional measure of career management strategy. We begin by discussing career management strategies and recent developments in personality assessment. This is followed by a discussion of the potential relationships between personality and career management strategies. Next, we describe our study, including a presentation of the method, results and discussion of same.

The effects of personality traits and attitudes on student uptake in hospitality employment

“…These findings support the previous research that extroversion is particularly critical in early career development, since it facilitates seeking out information about careers based on school and work experience (Caldwell and Burger, 1997). As noted by Guthrie et al (1998), extroverted individuals (e.g., sociable, outgoing, and gregarious) appear likely to use relationshiporiented strategies to interact with others, and thus develop positive interpersonal relationships (see Table 5) and are likely to choose hospitality jobs.…”

“…That is, career choices reflect a person's self-perception regarding his or her abilities, values and personality along with evaluations of how these individual aspects fit with particular occupations (Guthrie et al, 1998). Employees are likely to have higher job satisfaction and lower turnover rates if their personality traits highly match their work environment (Silva, 2006).…”

Career Counseling in the new Career Era: A Study about the Influence of Career Types, Career Satisfaction and Career Management on the Need for Career Counseling

“…Crant ship between initiative, a construct similar to proactive personality, and employability orientation. Other personality characteristics related to individual career management strategies and employability behavior are ambition (Guthrie et al, 1998) and openness to experience (Guthrie et al, 1998;Holland, Johnston, Asama & Polys, 1993;Van Dam, 2004). These findings strengthen the assumption that people who invest in career self-management have a specific profile.…”

“…The stratification variables chosen were age and level of education. Both variables influence career outcomes such as career success (Judge et al, 1995;Tharenou, 1997), career strategies (Guthrie et al, 1998), the stability of career anchors (Schein, 1978) etc. Consequently, we expect them to influence the career type and the perceived need for career counseling.…”

“…Research revealed that the extent to which people undertake career self-management activities depends on their personality (Guthrie, Coate & Schwoerer, 1998). Crant ship between initiative, a construct similar to proactive personality, and employability orientation.…”