Relationship between the ‘Big Five’ Personality and Career Success

Abstract

The aim of this descriptive and correlational research is to explore the relationship between employee’s personality and career achievement. This study involved 126 respondents ranging from grades 1 to 54 in the Land and Mines Office, Nusajaya, Johor. The respondents were selected using stratified random sampling method. The Big Five Inventory (BFI) questionnaire was designed to evaluate the respondents’ personality, while the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) was developed to measure their career success. Then, the collected data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. The results indicated that the ‘openness to experience’ personality trait was found high in the majority of respondents as compared to the other four personality dimensions. In addition, the respondents scored higher in intrinsic career success as compared to extrinsic career success. Furthermore, the Pearson correlation test revealed that the dimensions of agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness are associated to the intrinsic career success. However, the findings related to extrinsic career success showed a positive relationship with the conscientiousness dimension, and a negative relationship with the neuroticism dimension. Finally, the findings from this study will make a significant contribution to the field of personality and career success.