Personality, Personnel Selection, and Job Performance

Abstract

Synonyms Selection and assessment, work performance, personality traits Definitions Job Performance: The term job performance can either refer to the objective or subjective outcomes one achieves in a specific job (e.g., the profit of a sales persons, the number of publications of a scientist, the number of successful operations of a surgeon) or to work-related activities (e.g., writing an article, conducting specific surgical acts). In the majority of research on this topic, job performance as an outcome is used. Personnel selection: Personnel selection refers to the process of selecting the best employees for specific jobs. Main text One major application of personality research is in the area of personnel selection. The key question in this area is to which extent personality can predict how well a candidate will perform on the job he or she is applying for. Most scholars in this area acknowledge that personality has predictive validity for job performance. In line with this, personality assessment is part of the selection procedure in many organizations. 1. The Big Five and job performance The majority of research on the role of personality in selection and assessment has been conducted using the well-known Big Five taxonomy, and there are now several meta-analyses showing that the Big Five show consistent, but low to moderate criterion-related validity regarding job performance (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Judge, Rodell, Klinger, Simon, & Crawford, 2013). The most comprehensive study on this topic was conducted by Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2001). They conducted an extensive meta-analysis that ranged from k = 143 studies (N = 23,225) for openness to experience, to K = 239 (N = 48,100) for