2013 MBAA/NAMS presentation, "Using Personality to Identify High Technology Career Preference in Military Recruits" Heather H. Jia, Eastern Illinois University and David E. Fleming, Eastern Illinois University

1. Using Personality to Identify High Tech
Career Preference in Military Recruits
David Fleming
Heather Jia

2. RESEARCH MOTIVATION
• U.S. Military
• Innovative marketer in terms of recruitment strategy.
• Using entertainment (i.e., video games) to attract today’s recruits
• An opportunity to recruit the next generation of soldiers
• Facing budget cuts
• Must get most “bang for buck”
• Military jobs are becoming more technical and complex
• Bureau of Labor statistics (Occupational Outlook Handbook)
• Must select those recruits that are best able to perform the necessary tasks

3. RESEARCH MOTIVATION
• Objectives:
• Create links between currently administered personality inventories
(personality), recruit affinity for technology and the desire for high
technology military careers
• Goal:
• Allow recruiters to evaluate the potential fit of recruits
• Select those that fit the needs of the new, high tech military
• Avoid significant cost increases from the administration of additional tests

4. PERSONALITY
Five Factor Model of Personality from Costa &McCrae,
1985
• Openness to Experience – intellectually curious, creative,
imaginative
• Conscientiousness – focused, task-oriented, thorough
• Agreeableness – kind, cooperative, generous, trusting
• Extraversion – sociable, dominant, energetic, positive
• Neuroticism – anxious, moody, envious

5. AFFINITY FOR TECHNOLOGY
• Affinity for Technology (AFT) from Edison and Geissler, 2003
• “positive affect toward technology (in general)” (p. 140).
• Antecedents
• Optimism
• Need for cognition
• Self-efficacy.
• Moderated by age, and gender
• Key outcomes
• Market mavenism (Geissler & Edison 2005)
• Self-Directed learning project use (Fleming & Artis, Forthcoming)

6. CONGRUITY THEORY
• Introduced by Sirgy (1980, 1981, 1982a, 1982b)
• Based on the view that people possess multiple self-concepts
• Focuses on the ideal, actual & social self (Sirgy, 1982c)
• Ideal self - how an individual would like to see him/herself .
• Actual self - how an individual views himself or herself
• Social self - how an individual would like others to see him or her.
• Consumers were more likely to select products that possessed traits which were
consistent with positive aspects their self-image

7. CONGRUITY THEORY
• Consumers are more likely to be loyal to a firm that
they perceive as having an image consistent their own
(Sirgy and Samli, 1985)
• Customers are more likely to report a positive service
experience if they perceive the firm as having
personality traits congruent with their own (Harris and
Fleming, 2005).
• People who had high congruence between their
personality and work environment were more likely to
be persistent in their current career Donohue (2006)

8. PROPOSITIONS
• P1a: Openness to experience is positively related to AFT.
• P1b. Conscientiousness is positively related to AFT.
• P1c. Agreeableness is positively related to AFT.
• P1d. Extraversion is positively related to AFT.
• P1e. Neuroticism is negatively related to AFT.

9. PROPOSITIONS
• P2: AFT is positively related to the preference of a high
technology military career by the recruit.
• P3: AFT is positively related to the amount of time spent on
military websites prior to joining the armed forces.

10. CONCEPTUAL MODEL

11. MEASURES
• Personality Five Factor Model
• Adapted from Mowen (2000)
• 4 items per factor (20 items total)
• Affinity for technology
• Geissler & Edison (2005)
• 7 items
• Career Choice
• Branch of service
• Expected job
• Time on website
• Single question
• Approximate number of hours before joining the military

12. IMPLICATIONS
• Provides additional metrics for identifying potential soldiers best
suited for the high tech careers needed in the modern military
• Demonstrates empirically whether the military websites as
currently designed/implemented actually draw those potential
soldiers who possess the desired skill sets
• Shows whether other modern technology based recruiting tools,
such as video games, are effective in generating recruits who fit
the target profile of the modern military
• Creates additional nomological links for personality and affinity
for technology based on established theory