Personality Traits and Career Satisfaction in Training and Development Occupations: Toward a Distinctive T&D Personality Profile

Abstract

As careers in training and development (T&D) continue to evolve, almost no human resource development (HRD) research has investigated personality traits in today's T&D occupations, despite evidence linking personality with work success. Toward filling this lacuna, we identified four Big Five personality traits and four narrow traits with content matching T&D competencies. Based on person–career fit theory, we hypothesized that the trait profile would differentiate T&D from other occupations, and the traits would correlate with T&D career satisfaction. From 90,000+ individuals receiving private career transition services, we compared trait scores of 284 individuals in T&D occupations and the others via bootstrapping (5,000 random samples, n = 284, with the same age and gender distributions). The T&D personality profile was significantly elevated, with greatest differences on the narrow trait empathy, closely followed by assertiveness and customer service orientation plus optimism (small difference), and significant differences on Big Five traits extraversion, openness, and agreeableness (small difference), but no difference on emotional stability. T&D career satisfaction correlated significantly with five traits in the profile, most strongly with emotional stability and optimism. Also, emotional stability correlated more highly with career satisfaction for T&D than non‐T&D occupations. The distinctive T&D personality profile raises questions for further HRD research and carries practical value for training and development of T&D personnel.

A lifespan perspective for understanding career self-management and satisfaction: The role of developmental human resource practices and organizational support

“…First, given the findings that organization-based support resources generally enhance employee career satisfaction, organizations are strongly encouraged to adopt developmental HR policies, practices and career development support to enhance employees’ career satisfaction. Career satisfaction is important not only for an individual’s well-being and happiness but also for a wide array of organizational outcomes, including lower turnover rates (Armstrong-Stassen and Ursel, 2009; Chan and Mai, 2015), organizational culture and capability development (Fleisher et al, 2014), and enhanced customer-service orientation (Sundstrom et al, 2016). Moreover, our findings demonstrate the importance of an employee’s ‘perceptual’ aspect of organizational HR practices that influence their career satisfaction, which are in line with recent HRM literature undertaken from a social cognitive view (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Nishii et al, 2008).…”

“…Armstrong-Stassen and Ursel, 2009; Ng and Feldman, 2014; Spurk et al, 2015). Research has shown that career satisfaction directly or indirectly predicts various forms of individual and organizational outcomes, including happiness (Pan and Zhou, 2013), retention (or reduced turnover intentions; see Armstrong-Stassen and Ursel, 2009; Chan and Mai, 2015), organizational culture and capability development (Fleisher et al, 2014), and customer service orientations (Sundstrom et al, 2016). Moreover, it is generally accepted that career satisfaction constitutes a crucial component of subjective career success (Hall and Chandler, 2005; Heslin, 2005; Zhou et al, 2012).…”

The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence to Career Success: Beyond Personality Traits

“…Traditionally, the widely recognized Big Five personality traits have been used to explain career success [15,16]. This refers to unchanging traits such as extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness [17].…”

Testing the psychometric properties of a short skills inventory for students looking for their first job

“…It was also found that the highest correlation is that between “supporting and cooperation” and “adapting and coping” ( r = 0.787, p < 0.001). Both these skills are characterized by the ability to deal with people [ 67 ].…”