magazine issue 12 2006 / Issue 1

Not Again! I’m Looking for a Job but I Don’t Know Why It Is Taking So Long!

• written by Silvia Barriga

(1) Personality traits, such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Personality operates on job search through the engagement of different search strategies and the decision to engage in proactive job search behaviors.
(2) Generalized expectancies and self-evaluations, which are related to  locus of control and optimism and job search  self-efficacy. Generalized expectancies with respect to agency and outcomes, respectively, have been suggested to relate to job search behavior and employment outcomes through their influence on both problem and emotion focused coping during the search process. The authors placed self-esteem and job search self-efficacy in the self-evaluation complex. Self-esteem pertains to an evaluation of self-worth; self-efficacy is typically concerned with self-evaluation specific to a task or class of tasks, in the case of job search.
(3) Situational antecedents, including motives and social variables. Many researchers have suggested the extent to which individuals engage and persist in self-directed job search behavior is likely to be influenced by their motives for obtaining employment and the extent to which their environment supports search activities. The two prominent motives are financial need and employment commitment.
(4) Biographical variables, including both history and demographic variables. The five main demographic variables are age, gender, education, race, and work-job tenure.

Also, Kanfer et al. (2001) identified three major employment consequences of self-regulated job search behavior. These are (1) Status, that is if the person is employed or not (2) Search duration, which refers to the length of time that the individual looked for a job, and (3) Number of job offers.