Job search and employment: A personality - Motivational analysis and meta-analytic review

A motivational, self-regulatory conceptualization of job search was used to organize and investigate the relationships between personality, expectanci es, self, social, motive, and biographical variables and individual differe nces in job search behavior and employment outcomes. Meta-analytic results indicated that all antecedent variables, except optimism, were significantl y related to job search behavior, with estimated population correlations ra nging from -.15 to .46. As expected, job search behavior was significantly and positively related to finding employment. Several antecedents of job se arch were also significantly related to employment success, although the si ze of these relationships was consistently smaller than those obtained for job search. Moderator analyses showed significant differences in the size o f variable relationships for type of job search measure (effort vs. intensi ty) and sample type (job loser vs. employed job seeker vs. new entrant).