Date post: | 25-Dec-2014 |
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Using Personality to Identify High Tech Career Preference in Military Recruits
David Fleming Heather Jia
RESEARCH MOTIVATION
• U.S. Military • Innovative marketer in terms of recruitment strategy. • Using entertainment (i.e., video games) to attract today’s recruits • An opportunity to recruit the next generation of soldiers • Facing budget cuts • Must get most “bang for buck”
• Military jobs are becoming more technical and complex • Bureau of Labor statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook) • Must select those recruits that are best able to perform the necessary tasks
RESEARCH MOTIVATION
• Objectives: • Create links between currently administered personality inventories
(personality), recruit affinity for technology and the desire for high technology military careers
• Goal: • Allow recruiters to evaluate the potential fit of recruits • Select those that fit the needs of the new, high tech military • Avoid significant cost increases from the administration of additional tests
PERSONALITY
Five Factor Model of Personality from Costa &McCrae, 1985
• Openness to Experience – intellectually curious, creative, imaginative
• Conscientiousness – focused, task-oriented, thorough • Agreeableness – kind, cooperative, generous, trusting • Extraversion – sociable, dominant, energetic, positive • Neuroticism – anxious, moody, envious
AFFINITY FOR TECHNOLOGY
• Affinity for Technology (AFT) from Edison and Geissler, 2003 • “positive affect toward technology (in general)” (p. 140). • Antecedents • Optimism • Need for cognition • Self-efficacy.
• Moderated by age, and gender • Key outcomes • Market mavenism (Geissler & Edison 2005) • Self-Directed learning project use (Fleming & Artis, Forthcoming)
CONGRUITY THEORY • Introduced by Sirgy (1980, 1981, 1982a, 1982b) • Based on the view that people possess multiple self-concepts • Focuses on the ideal, actual & social self (Sirgy, 1982c) • Ideal self - how an individual would like to see him/herself . • Actual self - how an individual views himself or herself • Social self - how an individual would like others to see him or her. • Consumers were more likely to select products that possessed traits which were
consistent with positive aspects their self-image
CONGRUITY THEORY
• Consumers are more likely to be loyal to a firm that they perceive as having an image consistent their own (Sirgy and Samli, 1985)
• Customers are more likely to report a positive service experience if they perceive the firm as having personality traits congruent with their own (Harris and Fleming, 2005).
• People who had high congruence between their personality and work environment were more likely to be persistent in their current career Donohue (2006)
PROPOSITIONS
• P1a: Openness to experience is positively related to AFT.
• P1b. Conscientiousness is positively related to AFT.
• P1c. Agreeableness is positively related to AFT.
• P1d. Extraversion is positively related to AFT.
• P1e. Neuroticism is negatively related to AFT.
PROPOSITIONS
• P2: AFT is positively related to the preference of a high technology military career by the recruit.
• P3: AFT is positively related to the amount of time spent on military websites prior to joining the armed forces.
CONCEPTUAL MODEL
MEASURES • Personality Five Factor Model • Adapted from Mowen (2000) • 4 items per factor (20 items total) • Affinity for technology • Geissler & Edison (2005) • 7 items • Career Choice • Branch of service • Expected job • Time on website • Single question • Approximate number of hours before joining the military
IMPLICATIONS • Provides additional metrics for identifying potential soldiers best
suited for the high tech careers needed in the modern military • Demonstrates empirically whether the military websites as
currently designed/implemented actually draw those potential soldiers who possess the desired skill sets
• Shows whether other modern technology based recruiting tools, such as video games, are effective in generating recruits who fit the target profile of the modern military
• Creates additional nomological links for personality and affinity for technology based on established theory