An empirical study of personality traits, job market appraisal and self-perceived employability in an uncertain environment

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether personality traits play a significant role in understanding students’ self-perceived employability and test if the associations are influenced by the student’s job market appraisal. This is important as perceptions about one’s employability hold invaluable importance for students in uncertain job environments as they might need to form strategies to cope with unemployment until they find a job.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 296 using a questionnaire survey approach and analyzed using hierarchical regression to test the hypothesized associations.FindingsThe findings showed that agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience are positive and significantly associated with self-perceived employability. Also, job market appraisal played a momentous role in predicting self-perceived employability both directly and via interaction with conscientiousness and openness to experience.Practical implicationsThe present study is valuable to different stakeholders such as educators, employers and students as it identifies the personality dispositions that should be encouraged among students while also indicating the need for fostering student’s reappraisal of uncertain job markets.Originality/valueThis study presents new evidence on the application of the appraisal theory by indicating the interaction between personality traits and cognitive appraisal. This advances the current theoretical understanding of the mechanism through which personality traits can best explain individual differences in self-perceived employability.