This essay will talk about to what extent does personality predicts employee performance and also explain

how personality traits affect individuals professional careers across life span. This essay will be very
interesting as mainly people believe that skills or talents are the main qualities that affect their
performance but surprisingly an individuals personality can also have a major role to play in it.
Huczynski & Buchanan (2013) defines personality as the psychological qualities that influence an
individuals characteristic behavior patterns, in a stable and distinctive manner. Personality theories for
instance the Big five and the RIASEC model will be discussed and linked together in detail along with the
motivational concepts such as communion, status and accomplishment striving will be analyzed and
associated with the Big five theory.
Personality is the visible aspect of ones character which is primarily the essential character of a person
or the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual (Knights & Willmott, 2012, p.
86). With in depth research on personality some scholars say that personality is an effective tool to predict
the correlation between personality and job performance (Ozer & Benet Martinez, 2006; Schulman, 2011
cited in Awadh & Ismail, n.d, p.109). Theories such as the Five Factor Model (FFM) commonly known as
the big five personality dimensions, Hollands RIASEC model, motivational concepts like communion
striving, status striving and accomplishment striving (Barrick, Stewart & Piotrowski, 2002) are
considered the most relevant based on the topic. The big five personality traits comprises of Openness,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Openness means when a person is
curious, original, intellectual, creative and open to new ideas. Conscientiousness personalities are
organized, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented and dependable. Outgoing, talkative, sociable and
people who enjoy being in social situations are extraverts. Agreeableness characterizes people who are
affable, tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind and warm. While anxious, irritable, temperamental and moody
are people with a Neurotic personality trait (Carpenter, Talya, and Erdogan, n.d). In addition to the FFM
model, Hollands RIASEC model is very profound for its six personality types in which people could be
categorized into namely realistic (prefers concrete task, enjoys working alone and are the Doers),
investigative (are analytical, curious, precise and are the Thinkers), artistic (expressive, original,
nonconforming and are the Creators), social (enjoys working with and helping others and are the
Helpers), enterprising (likes persuading and leading others to attain their goals so they are the Persuaders)
and conventional (likes everything in a systematic way like filing records or reproducing data and are
known as the Organizers). Besides these traits, motivational concepts like communion, status and
accomplishment striving also play a major role in determining a personality of an individual by knowing
what motivates him the best. Communion striving is described as getting along with co-workers, status
striving is when people try to get ahead of their co-workers with action directed towards gaining power
I

and accomplishment striving is when an individual is task oriented. These three variables motivate an
employee to work harder thus improving the employees performance. Although status striving is the only
variable which is strongly linked to performance when in comparison to the other two variables (Barrick,
Stewart & Piotrowski, 2002).
Among the FFM traits the two which correlates most to job performance are extraversion and
conscientiousness. Extraverts gave a high performance in sales only when their performance was
rewarded (Stewart, 1996 cited in Barrick, Stewart & Piotrowski, 2002). Extroversion also links positively
to job performance as those employees love social interaction which in turn helps them to blend in easily
with coworkers building a friendly and positive image in their managers minds leading to a high task
performance and job satisfaction. Bozionelos (2004) carried out a sample study of 279 full time white
collared employees who completed questionnaires sent to them via internal mail. His study was
conducted to investigate the relationship between the big five factors and work involvement. One of the
prominent outcome of his study was that a combination of extroversion and openness is required for
higher work involvement, these independently cannot be effective. Researchers have found a consistent
relationship between conscientiousness and job performance, regardless of an individuals job (Barrick &
Mount, 1991; Salgado, 1997 cited in Barrick, Stewart & Piotrowski, 2002, p.45). All the factors included
in conscientiousness leads to a good job performance as they are likely to be an effective and efficient
worker thus being more productive. Also they are likely to be more punctual than others and unlikely to
show counterproductive behavior which leads to conscientiousness being a highly valuable trait for
recruiters. However there might be a potential downside which is that as they are so organized that they
might concentrate more on details rather than looking at the big picture (Carpenter, Talya, and Erdogan,
n.d). Agreeableness and openness are moderately linked to performance as people high in agreeableness
are very helpful towards others and do not retaliate much when treated unfairly which may not fit in well
for a job such as a lawyer as agreeable people are kind and gentle who may not be able to stand up against
an opponent. People high in openness are creative and very much adaptable to change but get bored very
easily with a routine job. Neuroticism is negatively related to job performance as a neurotic person has
trouble forming relationships with their coworkers and has a tendency to experience stress and depression
at most of the times. In a study to test the mediating effects of motivation among 164 sales representatives
Barrick et al. (2002) has linked status striving as the main motivator for extraversion, accomplishment
striving as a main motivator for conscientiousness and communion striving as the main motivator for
agreeableness in a sales job. It is further said that openness and neuroticism are not expected to
correspond with either motivational measures or job performance.

II

Career success can be defined as the real or perceived achievements individuals have accumulated as a
result of their work experiences (Judge, Cable, Boudreau & Bretz, 1995 cited in Judge, Higgins,
Thoresen & Barrick, 1999). Career success can be defined as extrinsic success and intrinsic success.
Intrinsic success is defined as job satisfaction and extrinsic success consists of outcomes such as income
and status. In the study carried out by Judge et al. (1999) found out that conscientiousness is correlated to
both extrinsic and intrinsic success whereas neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion is associated to
extrinsic success. General mental ability (GMA) plays a vital role in positively affecting job performance
throughout an individuals career as GMA was positively linked to extrinsic success though no link was
found for it to be related to intrinsic success. It was also stated that individuals who had a high GMA in
childhood were more likely to be successful extrinsically in their careers. In addition to, the knowledge a
person had of his personality in childhood showed that they were more successful in predicting their
career success in future. Furthermore, they also conducted an analysis between Hollands RIASEC model
and the big five traits. Extraversion was positively linked to social jobs and negatively to realistic and
investigative jobs. Openness was negatively interrelated to conventional jobs. Conscientiousness was
positively associated to realistic jobs whereas agreeableness didnt relate to any of the RIASEC model. A
major limitation to this study would be that it was only conducted in one country making the sample
geographically restricted.
To conclude, employee performance is predicted by personality but only to a certain extent, other factors
also have to be taken into account when recruiting employees for a job because it is very crucial for
employers to select the employee with the most suitable personality for the job which can lead to high job
performance and satisfaction thus benefitting the organization as a whole. Also job performance may
depend on factors unrelated to personality such as luck, training, culture and norms (Huczynski &
Buchanan, 2013). Therefore it can also be concluded that personality traits can have an affect on an
individuals professional career but it solely depends on their mental ability as it is found that smart
people have a high position in their company and generally earn a high salary leading to a higher job
satisfaction.

Bibliography
III

Awadh, A.M. & Ismail, W.K.W. (n.d.). The impact of personality traits and employee work-related
attitudes on employee performance with them moderating effect of organizational culture: the case of
Saudi Arabia. Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 1(10), pp.108-127 [Online].
Available at http://www.ajbms.org/articlepdf/AJBMS20121028.pdf [Accessed at 22nd November 2013].
Barrick, M. R., Stewart, G. L., & Piotrowski, M. (2002). Personality and job performance: test of the
mediating effects of motivation among sales representatives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), 4351.
Bozionelos, N (2004), 'The big five of personality and work involvement', Journal Of Managerial
Psychology, 19, 1, pp. 69-81, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 22 November 2013.
Buchanan D. A. and Huczynski, A. A. (2013) Organizational Behaviour, (8th ed.) Harlow: Pearson
Education Ltd.
Carpenter, M., Bauer, T. & Erdogan, B. (n.d.) Principles of management [Online]. Available at
http://cms.cerritos.edu/uploads/jramos/BA115%20Carpenter/BA115%20Carpenter%20PPT%20Chapter
%2002.pdf [Accessed at 22nd November 2013].
Judge, T. A., Higgins, C. A., Thoresen, C. J., & Barrick, M. R. (1999). The big five personality traits,
general mental ability, and career success across the life span. Personnel Psychology, 52, 621-652.
Knights, D. and Willmott, H. (2012) Introducing Organization Behaviour and Mangement, (2nd ed.).
Andover: Cengage Ltd.
Barrick, M., Mount, M. & Gupta, R. (2003), Meta-analysis of the relationship between the five-factor
model of personality and holland's occupational types, Personnel Psychology, 56, 1, pp. 45-74.

Personality does in fact predict performance, although only at a moderate level (it is because of this that most psychologists
recommend using personality tests as asupplement to other selection tools such as structured interviews and reference checks)

Conscientiousness in particular is the strongest predictor of performance out of the Big Five
Different combinations of personality traits are needed for jobs that have unique demands, such as customer service and
managerial work (note- even different skill sets and personality traits are needed even as one moves up from supervisor to mid-level to
executive leader)

IV