The study examined the job-search intentions and subsequent behavior of 32 unemployed males and 32 unemployed females, median age of 43 years, in relation to conscientiousness and the lower-order trait procrastination and to rated person-task characteristics of importance, pleasantness, and competence regarding 14 job-search activities. At Time 1, conscientiousness was positively related to each of the person-task characteristics and to intentions to engage in the composite of job-search activities; trait procrastination was not. At Time 2, two weeks later, trait procrastination predicted self-reported job-search behaviors, controlling for initial intentions, with procrastinators exhibiting less job-search activity in the two week interim, compared to nonprocrastinators. Both conscientiousness and trait procrastination were related to a direct self-report measure of dilatory behavior. The three person-task characteristics were found to mediate the relation of conscientiousness to job-search intentions and to dilatory behavior. In addition, perceived task pleasantness moderated the relation of conscientiousness to job-search behavior, controlling for intentions, such that higher levels of conscientiousness were associated with increases in behavior only under conditions of low task pleasantness. Discussion centered on the prominent role of the person-task characteristics and on the place of conscientiousness and trait procrastination in predicting intentions and behavior.As conceptualized, trait procrastination is a summary variable, rather than a source variable (Buss & Craik, 1983;Pervin, 1994). It is a summary of the predisposition to engage in dilatory behavior. For this reason, much of the research on trait procrastination can be viewed as a search for its proximal sources. Schouwenburg and Lay (1995) have recently narrowed the search by suggesting that trait procrastination is best interpreted as the lack of conscientiousness. Their conclusion was based on an assessment of the relations between each of the big-five factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and trait procrastination. The high negative association found between the factor conscientiousness and the lower-order trait procrastination, coupled with the relative independence of the trait to the remaining four big-five factors, was consistent with comparable data reported by Johnson and Bloom (1995). What remains is to demonstrate a link between conscientiousness and dilatory behavior (Lay, in press), and to explore the role of both conscientiousness and trait procrastination in predicting related variables. Conscientiousness is of wide importance in its own right, of course, not only as one of the big-five factors, but in terms of its relations to achievement and other behaviors (Barrick