Employing people who are interested in doing the job is a better way to ensure that the right person is hired for the job than depending only on the applicant's vocational interests, says a new study.
If a person has interests associated with the kind of skills required to do a particular job, then he/she will not only be good at the job but will also help others around them. These people are more likely to stay with the organization for a longer time.
When a person's characteristics match the skills required for a particular type of work environment, it is called a person-environment fit. Being a misfit in an environment would really affect the growth of a person and the organization.
“Interests had been ignored in personnel/organizational and educational research until very recently because their validity for predicting performance and tenure at work and in school was misunderstood,” said psychological scientist Christopher Nye of Bowling Green University, an author of the present study.
For the study, researchers gathered the data that was available on vocational, job performance and academic achievement. There were nearly 60 studies from 1942 to 2011 that were included in the present analysis. More than 15,000 participants were involved in the studies.
“These findings are important because they suggest that organizations may benefit from considering applicants’ interests prior to making hiring decisions," says Nye, according to a press release.
"People who love what they do are also more likely to be successful at it," said Nye. He also quoted Steve Job's speech at Stanford in 2005 wherein he told the students that, “the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”