Everyone wants a great career that fits them. Have you ever considered how matching personality to jobs can help career planning?
Previously, we looked at research that showed the links between personality, job structure and performance on the job.
In this post, I’ll share one case study of how a hospital used personality to match newly graduated nurses to the best career path for them.
What else can personality help us do at work?
For more information about personality – specifically the Big 5 personality factors – check out this post for a discussion.
Understanding personality provides real-world value. It can influence how we structure jobs, who we hire, how we assess people, how we give feedback and more.
Solving a nursing shortage with personality measures
A few years ago, I attended a conference related to hiring assessments and heard a fascinating case study. In this case study, personality played a key role in hiring and retaining key talent.
Facing a nursing shortage, a hospital system explored many creative ways to find and hire nurses. One solution was to hire more nurses straight out of nursing school. But the problem continued, because the newly graduated nurses sometimes had trouble adjusting and quit after a few months.
The hospital investigated this issue and determined that the nurses were often not a good fit for the specific department they were assigned to.
Coming out of school, many of the nurses did not have a specific department preference and defaulted to working where there was a current opening.
Different jobs need different personalities
The daily work and stress varied a lot between nursing roles in the emergency room, maternity, surgery, intensive care or general care.
Some new nurses ended up in departments that did not suit them.
The hospital tackled the problem by evaluating each job and re-thinking how to assign new nurses.
Working with industrial/ organizational psychologists, they determined which job would match well to certain criteria including different personality types.
Once they understood the jobs, they needed to get the right people to the right jobs.
Matching personality to jobs
The hospital started administering an assessment to newly graduated nurses who had already been hired. The assessment helped the hospital assign the nurses to a department that matched their personality types.
Nurses who enjoyed fast paced environments, like to solve puzzles and deal well with stress might match to the emergency room. Whereas a nurse who prefers quiet and a more predictable environment might match to lab work or dialysis.
The outcome
This new process of matching the nurses with departments helped with retention and performance.
Getting the nurses into the right jobs for them made a difference to the bottom-line performance of the hospital.
The benefits were broader than bottom-line performance. The matching process also helped launch the nurses into stronger long-term careers.
Matching personality and jobs helped everyone win.
