Demand for Personality Traits, Tasks, and Sorting

Vera Brenčič () and Andrew McGee
Additional contact information
Vera Brenčič: University of Alberta

No 16576, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In job ads, employers express demand for personality traits when seeking workers to perform tasks that can be completed with different behaviors (e.g., communication, problem-solving) but not when seeking workers to perform tasks involving narrowly prescribed sets of behaviors such as routine and mathematics tasks. For many tasks, employers appear to demand narrower personality traits than those measured at the Big Five factor level. The job ads also exhibit substantial heterogeneity within occupations in the tasks mentioned. Workers may thus sort based on personality-derived comparative advantages in tasks into jobs rather than occupations. In the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we confirm that personality sorting based on tasks occurs at both the occupation and job levels. In this sample, however, there is little evidence of task-specific wage returns to personality traits, which would influence the supply of traits to jobs with particular tasks. This may explain why personality sorting based on tasks in the sample is very limited in spite of the correlations between tasks and employers' demands for traits.

Keywords: job ads; sorting; tasks; personality; employer demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 J23 J24 J33 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72 pages
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Forthcoming - forthcoming in: Research in Labor Economics

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Related works:
Chapter: Demand for Personality Traits, Tasks, and Sorting (2024)
Working Paper: Demand for Personality Traits, Tasks, and Sorting (2023)
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