Do recruiters select workers with different personality traits for different tasks? A discrete choice experiment

Abstract

This paper explores whether firms recruit workers with different personality traits for different tasks. We conduct a discrete choice experiment among recruiters of 634 firms in Germany, asking recruiters to choose between job applicants who differ in seven characteristics: professional competence, the Big Five personality traits, and the prospective wage level. We find that all personality traits affect the hiring probability of the job applicant, with conscientiousness and agreeableness having the strongest positive effects. However, for analytical tasks, recruiters have a stronger preference for more open and conscientious applicants, while favoring more open, extraverted, and agreeable workers for interactive tasks. © 2022

Keywords

Author Keywords

Recruitment Discrete choice experiment Personality traits tasks

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Bonn, Bonn, Germany, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, Maastricht, Netherlands

Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Bonn, Bonn, Germany, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, Maastricht, Netherlands, United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands

IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, Maastricht, Netherlands

Funding & Acknowledgements

Universität Zürich, UZH

Comments from Wilbert van der Klaauw, Bart de Koning, Mark Levels, Samuel Mühlemann and two anonymous referees were very much appreciated and helped improve the paper. We wish to thank the participants of the CEDEFOP, EUROFOUND and IZA Conference on Workplace and Management Practices, the Lunch Talk Series on VET and Personnel Economics at the University of Zurich, the IAB Conference on Labour Market Transitions, the Scientific Advisory Board Meeting at BIBB, and the 7th Congress on Research in Vocational Education and Training at the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET) for their valuable comments. We also appreciate the support of Natalie Reid for language consulting.

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Do recruiters select workers with different personality traits for different tasks? A discrete choice experiment

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