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Take a Job, Any Job: Exploring the Importance of Matched Interests to Career Paths and Work Satisfaction
Author(s) -
Earl Joanne,
Iskandar Franz,
Elizondo Fabian
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of employment counseling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.252
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 2161-1920
pISSN - 0022-0787
DOI - 10.1002/joec.12101
Subject(s) - job satisfaction , psychology , job attitude , core self evaluations , social psychology , work (physics) , personality , job design , face (sociological concept) , job performance , big five personality traits , applied psychology , sociology , mechanical engineering , social science , engineering
Employment counselors often face the conundrum of whether to advise people to take a job or to hold out for something that better matches their interests. This study investigated whether matched interests in an initial job predicted the subsequent career journey of 336 sales engineers and whether this made a difference to longer term work satisfaction and tenure. Results showed that although the first job significantly influenced people's future career journey, personality and job characteristics were likely to be more influential than matched interests in predicting work satisfaction. Thus, people may be better off taking well‐designed jobs than holding out for matched interests.