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