The Impact of Big Five Personality Factors on Employee’s Career Success: Evidence from A Leading Apparel Firm in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Every employee dreams of having a highly successful career that they enjoy, and that provides them with the lifestyle they desire. Therefore, today’s most of the employees are more concerned about their career and the success of career. The objective of this research is to examine the impact of big five personality factors on employee’s career success. Career success is the dependent variable which was taken to explore the objective (age, job level, and income level) and subjective (career satisfaction) elements. The independent variable mainly consists of extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and agreeableness, which have been obtained by the big five model. Accordingly, one leading apparel firm was selected to conduct this quantitative study. A questionnaire survey was used to gather data from staff-level employees, and 120 responses were obtained. The correlation and regression analysis were used in analyzing data through SPSS Version 23.0. The findings of the study indicated that the conscientiousness personality factor was found a higher level of favorable experience in the majority of the staff level employees when compared with the other four personality factors. Thus, conscientiousness and openness to experience were moderately correlated with subjective career success. As the results of other personality factors also have a significant positive relationship with career success with different levels. However, neuroticism is negatively correlated with objective career success, and extraversion was not supported to objective career success. The final output of the study has proven that there is an impact on both objective and subjective career success by big five factors to a certain extent.