The Influence of Personality on Career Success: An Empirical Study

This thesis studies the relation between the “Big Five” personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) and career success. Career success is divided into income and job satisfaction to be able to study the differences in the relation of these two types of career success. Cross-sectional data of the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences panel (LISS) is used to investigate the possible relation between personality and career success. Results obtained from 1940 Dutch workers reveal that conscientious, extraverted, calm and disagreeable workers report to have higher incomes. Furthermore, it is shown that conscientious, agreeable and calm workers report to have higher job satisfaction. It is found that demography-related, human capital related and profession related variables are associated with income and job satisfaction. Additionally, women are found to have higher incomes than men for equal levels of the traits openness to experience and neuroticism