What is the single best predictor of job performance regardless of job type?

Cognitive ability is consistently the best predictor of job performance across all job types, levels and industries. Cognitive ability covers a wide variety of aptitudes including spatial reasoning, logical reasoning, verbal skills, computational skills, and analytical skills. A relatively short cognitive ability test can accurately predict aggregate employee success for most jobs, although a longer version may be more helpful for higher level hires.

• Growth mindset

Growth mindset is the idea that people can always improve. Someone with a high growth mindset is willing to learn and make an effort to make themselves better. This has been studied extensively by Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford, who has shown that high growth mindset is predictive of employee success. Like cognitive ability, growth mindset is predictive across the gamut of jobs, skill-levels and industries.

• Conscientiousness & emotional stability

If you’ve ever heard of the popular Big Five Personality Skills test, these traits will sound familiar. Of those five commonly assessed personality traits, conscientiousness and emotional stability (called ‘neuroticism’ in the Big 5) are by far the most effective at predicting an employee’s ability to perform well in a given role. Conscientiousness measures how hardworking, dutiful and organized someone is, while emotional stability indicates how well someone effectively deals with negative emotions and moves forward after failure. Predicting these traits is extraordinarily helpful to managers who want employees to be able to take constructive criticism, learn from mistakes and improve with time.

Worst Predictors of Job Performance

• First impressions

First impressions can make or break many interviews and hiring decisions. Managers are known to rely on a “gut instinct” to decide whether or not someone is right for the job, but it’s often an unreliable way to predict a candidate’s future performance. According to this article by Dr. Daniel Kahneman, you can only trust your gut if your conditions meet the following qualifications:

1. You’re in a predictable environment

2. You have regular practice

3. You have immediate feedback on your judgment

While many hiring managers may feel that interviews are a predictable environment and that they have regular practice as interviewers, they won’t get feedback on their judgments until months down the line when a hired candidate has had a chance to be trained, settle in, and actually get some work done. In hiring, it’s much better to rely on research and data. Optimize Hire scores are calculated based on decades of psychological research and tested constantly to understand the most predictive traits of successful employees.

• Similarities between the interviewer and candidate

Research shows that hiring managers are extremely likely to hire someone who reminds them of themselves - especially if they don’t use another unbiased metric to measure potential employee success.  Even if that hiring manager is a really great worker, the strongest teams are made up of groups of people with diverse strengths, ideas, and working styles.

• Brain teasers and deliberately difficult questions are actually quite poor predictors of job performance. While brain teasers sound similar to a cognitive ability test, more straightforward cognitive ability questions, like those developed by Dr. Shane Frederick at Yale, are actually correlated with future employee success. Trick questions have not been found to have any meaningful connection.

  Additionally to conscientiousness, generalized validity for job performance has also been found for emotional stability, even though the coefficient of 0.13 is rather small. Contrary, openness to experience, agreeableness, and extraversion are only marginally correlated with general job performance. At most, correlations can be found for specific criteria or occupations. For example, extraversion and openness for experience have been found to predict training performance, and extraversion has been found to predict performance in managerial positions and, to a smaller degree, for police officers.

  In light of the relatively small correlation coefficients, the relevance of personality traits for predicting job performance has been criticized (see Tett and Christiansen, 2007, for a discussion). For its application in high stakes situations like personnel selection, an additional problem is social desirability, i.e., the tendency to euphemize self-reports of personality to maximize the probability for a job offer.

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  Emotional Intelligence and Competencies

  Christopher TH. Miners, Ivona Hideg, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Job Performance

  The (positive) relationship of EI with job performance is likely to be a complex function of the indirect benefits of social capital and the direct benefits of successfully incorporating emotions in (or excluding them from) decision-making processes. EI should help employees to establish a high level of social capital that, in turn, will provide greater access to valuable information and other resources that facilitate job performance (Sparrowe et al., 2001). EI might also facilitate job performance more directly, by enabling employees to create or up-regulate the emotions that facilitate a particular task and down-regulate the emotions that interfere with it. A person with a high level of EI is aware of the associations between emotion and cognition, and capable of changing the former to facilitate the latter. This, in short, will help the person to make the best possible decisions and help other people to do the same, which is likely to be reflected in their level of job performance (see Côté and Miners, 2006).

  There are a number of individual studies and, now, meta-analyses that confirm EI can facilitate job performance. For example, with respect to the former, Kluemper et al. (2013) found that the ability to manage emotions can facilitate task performance and organizational citizenship behavior directed at the individual, and reduce the likelihood of workplace deviance. The pattern of results held even when a proxy for cognitive intelligence and a measure of the Big Five personality traits were entered into the analyses. The most recent meta-analysis was conducted by O'Boyle Jr. et al. (2011), who used dominance analyses to estimate the relative contributions of EI, cognitive intelligence, and the Big Five personality traits to job performance. They found that EI demonstrated substantial, relative importance even in the presence of these other, robust predictors.

  Studies conducted by other researchers have shown that it may be helpful to consider the roles of other individual differences to understand the relationship between EI and job performance. Côté and Miners (2006) found that the relationship between EI and job performance becomes increasingly positive as cognitive intelligence decreases. EI, in other words, compensated for lower levels of cognitive intelligence in helping to achieve a high level of job performance. EI also interacts with other individual differences in a similar fashion, such that its role becomes more prominent if other means of achieving a high level of job performance are absent, or present but in an insufficient quantity. For example, Doucet and Oldham (2006) found that EI had a stronger relationship with job performance for employees at a telephone service center who possessed low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness, both of which should facilitate a high level of job performance when present to a greater extent.

  The results of recent research also suggest that the role of situational characteristics and job characteristics, in particular, should be considered to better understand the relationship between EI and job performance. For example, Farh et al. (2012) found that EI predicted job performance for employees whose work entailed a high level of managerial demands (i.e., the extent to which a particular job involves the management of diverse individuals, functions, and lines of business), but not for employees whose work entailed a low level of such demands. A meta-analysis by Joseph and Newman (2010) provides further impetus for considering situational characteristics. Their results showed that EI had a much stronger, positive correlation with job performance among jobs with a high level of emotional demands, at least when EI was conceptualized and measured as a set of abilities.

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  Pay, Compensation, and Performance, Psychology of

  Joseph J. Martocchio, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Job Performance

  According to Motowidlo (2003), job performance is defined as the total expected value to the organization of the discrete behavioral episodes that an individual carries out over a specified time period. Those researchers emphasize two key issues in this definition. First, performance is an aggregated property of multiple, discrete behaviors that occur over time. Second, the property of behavior to which performance refers is its expected value to the organization.

  Two performance criteria – mean performance and performance variation – are among the most commonly studied indicators in pay-for-performance research. According to Reb and Cropanzano (2007), average performance evens out employee's contribution to an organization. Average performance evens out variations from the mean that might be due to passing influences outside the control of the employee.

  Following this rationale, past research found that average performance strongly predicts variance in pay and reward allocation (Barnes and Morgeson, 2007; Zhou and Martocchio, 2001), largely because typical, or average, performance represents the dominant conceptualization of performance (Rushton et al., 1981). In the pay-for-performance context, it is eminently reasonable to expect that higher mean performance will lead to positive changes in compensation level.

  Performance variation also plays a role in compensation award decisions. Sturman (2007) maintains that long-term or directional changes over time are differentiated from short-term fluctuations, or unsystematic variation of performance. Within-person performance variation can be due to a variety of factors, including affective state (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996). Between persons, some individuals may show large variation in performance, that is, are inconsistent, whereas others show little variation, that is, perform consistently around the mean level or a long-term trend.

  According to Barnes et al. (2012), there are several reasons to expect that performance variation of greater magnitude is associated with smaller compensation. By definition, it is easier to predict the performance of employees who show little performance variability as compared to those who show high variability. Organizations tend to value predictability. Employees performing inconsistently can create uncertainty and disruptions for team members and other parties dependent on the employee, sometimes making it difficult to plan and perform interactively. This increases the risk of performance failures, coordination problems, and disrupted activities for other employees who are downstream in interdependencies.

  Moreover, inconsistent performance has been found to lead to attributions of negative traits (Fox et al., 1995) such as undependable. The word undependable, which is one of the hallmarks of the personality trait conscientiousness (Barrick and Mount, 1991), could be linked to high variability. Empirically, at least one study has found high performance variability to be associated with lower pay (Barnes and Morgeson, 2007). Organizations may pay higher compensation to more consistent performers in an effort to reward and retain these valued employees.

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  Personnel Selection, Psychology of

  Dan Ispas, Walter C. Borman, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Task Performance

  Task performance refers to the technical proficiency part of job performance (Borman et al., 2010). Task performance can be measured objectively or subjectively. Although objective measures of job performance look appealing, for most jobs they only tap into part of the criterion space. Objective criteria include production rates, sales, work samples, and job knowledge tests. Subjective criteria are the typical performance ratings usually provided by a supervisor. Performance ratings are the most commonly used criterion measures in industrial and organizational psychology research and practice.

  At least six taxonomies examining the dimensionality of task performance have been proposed (e.g., Borman and Brush, 1993; Borman et al., 1994; Hunt, 1996). Borman et al. (2010) summarized the common content across the six taxonomies. All of the taxonomies involve content related to communication and productivity/proficiency. Personal qualities and skills are reflected in five taxonomies. Problem solving, organizing/planning, and leadership/supervision are represented in four taxonomies. Accordingly, these are some of the exemplars we expect to see representing task performance dimensions such as those just identified. Task performance is usually measured by asking supervisors to rate their subordinates on various behaviors relevant for the job. Several rating formats are available including Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (Smith and Kendall, 1963), Behavior Summary Scales (Borman, 1979), Behavior Observation Scales (Latham and Wexley, 1981), and Computer Adaptive Rating Scales (Borman et al., 2001). To improve the quality of the ratings, raters can be trained using rater error training (which shows raters the common psychometric and perceptual errors commonly made) and frame-of-reference training (which familiarizes raters with the content of each performance dimension).

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  Aging and Work

  Keith L. Zabel, Boris B. Baltes, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Age and Workplace Outcomes

  One of the most common negative stereotypes of older workers is that older workers have lower levels of job performance than younger workers (Ng and Feldman, 2012). Three meta-analyses conducted by Ng and Feldman (2008, 2010b, 2012) have examined how chronological age, organizational tenure, and job tenure, respectively, impact job performance. Meta-analytic results suggested the strongest age–job performance relationship was between organizational tenure and performance, with organizational tenure positively predicting core task performance (Ng and Feldman, 2010a). Even though organizational tenure positively predicted job performance, it only accounted for slightly over 1% of its variance. Therefore, the practical significance of the relationship is low. In addition, the positive relationship between organizational tenure and core task performance goes against the conventional negative stereotype that younger workers are better performers than older workers (Posthuma and Campion, 2009). On the contrary, these results suggest that the socialization process and experience workers have from working in an organization actually help improve their task performance, although the effect is small. When considering chronological age, however, meta-analytic results suggest there is no relationship between age and job performance (Ng and Feldman, 2008) or job tenure and job performance (Ng and Feldman, 2013a).

  One explanation for the weak relationship between different conceptualizations of age and job performance is the presence of moderators. This proposition is supported by meta-analytic results that suggest the organizational tenure – job performance relationship was stronger for younger workers (those under age 37) compared to older workers (those over age 37; Ng and Feldman, 2010a). This finding is in line with the popular term ‘Peter Principle,’ which states that employees are promoted until they reach their own level of incompetence (Peter and Hull, 1969). To the extent to which it is more likely older workers have reached their level of incompetence relative to younger workers, this finding seems reasonable. Meta-analytic evidence also suggests that the organizational tenure-job performance relationship may be curvilinear in nature. Specifically, meta-analytic evidence suggests the organizational tenure–job performance relationship is significantly stronger at 3–6 years of organizational tenure relative to 0–3 years, 7–10 years, 11–14 years, and greater than 14 years (Ng and Feldman, 2010a).

  Even though meta-analytic evidence suggests the age–job performance relationship is rather weak, research suggests the negative stereotype that older workers have lower levels of job performance than younger workers can impact behavior in the workplace. For example, research using a laboratory study found that the older target received more severe punishment recommendations than the younger target for making a mistake (Rupp et al., 2006). In addition, this research found that individuals with high levels of agism, or prejudice toward older individuals, gave significantly more severe punishment recommendations to the older target compared to the younger target (Rupp et al., 2006).

  Similarly, research on the perceived productivity of workers across the life span revealed that employees under the age of 49 rate the perceived productivity of employees over 50 years old significantly lower than employees over 50 years old (Van Dalen et al., 2010). Perhaps more importantly, the aforementioned finding was found to be even stronger using a subset of the sample who self-identified as owners, heads of human resources departments, managing directors, and plant managers (Van Dalen et al., 2010). This finding suggests the negative stereotype that older workers are less productive than younger workers is strongest at the highest levels of organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of litigation and increasing the likelihood that a culture of negative stereotypes toward older workers will permeate to the rest of the organization.

  Given all the meta-analytic evidence, it seems the negative stereotype that a negative relationship exists between age and job performance is not warranted. That being said, findings suggest the negative stereotype does seem to affect how individuals perceive older workers when they make mistakes, and may impact the selection of qualified older workers for jobs when competing with qualified younger workers. Finally, results suggest years in one's organization are a better predictor than one's chronological age of job performance. To the extent to which one better learns how to navigate corporate policy and the culture of their organization after more time with that organization, this finding is warranted.

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  Job Satisfaction

  Howard M. Weiss, Kelsey L. Merlo, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Consequences of Differing Levels of Job Satisfaction

  An overriding impetus for the study of job satisfaction has been a belief that it is an important influence on job performance. Consequently, the nature of that relationship continues to be an important direction for the application of empirical and conceptual efforts. As employees can contribute to organizational effectiveness in many ways, through their task performance, commitment to the organization, reliability of attendance, provision of support and mentoring, and so on, no single statement can be made about satisfaction and performance. Instead, the importance of work attitudes to performance appears to be a function of what aspect of performance one is referring to.

  Initial interest focused on what might be called immediate task performance and by 1955 enough empirical studies of that relationship had been done to justify a review by Brayfield and Crockett. Their conclusion was rather surprising for the time. “It appears that there is little evidence in the available literature that employee attitudes of the type usually measured in morale surveys bear any simple – or for that matter, appreciable – relationship to performance on the job.” (1955: p. 408). Later Vroom (1964) reviewing essentially the same literature came to the same conclusion as did an early meta-analysis by Iaffaldano and Muchinsky (1985). More recently, a meta-analysis by Judge et al. (2001) reported a more moderate satisfaction–performance relationship (r = 0.30, corrected). They suggest that the difference is due primarily to methodological differences (Judge et al., 2001). A meta-analysis by Harter et al. (2002) found a moderate relationship between employee satisfaction and unit-level performance (r = 0.22). Regardless, it is important to note that even the most optimistic results find satisfaction explaining less than 10% of the variance in task performance. Further, most of the data points in these meta-analyses are from correlational studies, leaving causal direction ambiguous. Finally, Bowling (2007) suggests that the satisfaction–performance relationship is largely spurious. He found that the relationship between satisfaction and performance dropped to 0.09 after controlling for domain-specific personality traits (i.e., organization-based self-esteem), suggesting that satisfaction may not be causally related to performance. Overall, and contrary to intuition, these results suggest modest to negligible relationships between job satisfaction and task performance.

  Employee contributions to organizational effectiveness go beyond the contributions made by immediate task performance and therefore research has also looked at the ability of satisfaction to predict other criteria like job withdrawal (turnover, absenteeism, etc.) and extra-role behaviors (organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB)). Meta-analyses of studies examining satisfaction–turnover relationships generally produce findings similar to those for task performance, moderate but not substantial. For example, Carsten and Spector (1987) found that turnover was related to satisfaction (r = −0.26, corrected) and Tett and Meyer (1993) found that turnover intentions and withdrawal intentions were highly correlated with job satisfaction (r = −0.58, corrected), but observed turnover less so (r = −0.24). A number of other meta-analytic studies found relationships of a similar magnitude (Cotton and Tuttle, 1986; Fried et al., 2008; Griffeth et al., 2000; Hom et al., 1992; Podsakoff et al., 2009). Overall, satisfaction is most strongly related to turnover intention, not actual turnover. The attenuated relationship between intentions and behavior may be due to a myriad of other factors that are outside of the individual's control (i.e., ability to get another job).

  Similar to the satisfaction–turnover relationship, satisfaction has been weakly related to absence duration (r = 0.09) and absence frequency (r = −0.18; Scott and Taylor, 1985). The restricted relationship between absenteeism and satisfaction may be due to the employee's ability to express such behaviors (i.e., strict absence policies).

  In the 1980s, interest shifted to behaviors that were outside of the formal job requirements, such as OCB (see Bateman and Organ, 1983; Smith et al., 1983). OCBs, broadly defined as organizationally useful behaviors that are not formally prescribed by formal job requirements, appear to be moderately correlated with satisfaction (r > 0.16; Dalal, 2005; LePine et al., 2002; Organ and Ryan, 1995). CWBs, or behaviors intended to harm coworkers or the organization as a whole, can be considered the opposite of OCBs. Mount et al. (2006) found significant path coefficients between satisfaction and organizational CWBs (r = 0.41) and interpersonal CWBs (r = 0.40), and Dalal (2005) found a moderate relationship between satisfaction and overall CWBs (r = −0.37, corrected). In comparison to in-role behaviors, more substantive effect sizes for OCBs and CWBs may be due to the greater level of control that the employees have over these behaviors. OCBs and CWBs are not strongly regulated behaviors, and thus allow employees more latitude in expression.

  Harrison et al. (2006) have argued that this behavior-by-behavior approach to satisfaction consequences is inconsistent with basic attitude theory. Working from the compatibility principle of attitude theory, they argue that overall job satisfaction, as a general attitude, should be a better predictor of an aggregated index of employee contributions than of any single behavior. In a very creative meta-analysis, where they combine results for both withdrawal and extra-role behaviors, they conclude that the expected relationship of overall satisfaction with an integrated index of contribution approached 0.60. Their work is important because it shows a utility for job satisfaction that has been heretofore hard to find and because it demonstrates the usefulness of incorporating attitude theory into the study of job satisfaction.

  Finally, interest in satisfaction is not driven entirely by organizational considerations as there is reason to believe that job dissatisfaction has negative effects on mental health. For example, a meta-analysis by Lee and Ashforth (1996) found significant relationship with satisfaction and Maslach's (1982) three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (r = −0.31, corrected), depersonalization (r = −0.44, corrected), and personal accomplishment (r = 0.29, corrected). Further, a meta-analysis by Faragher et al. (2005) found that satisfaction is related to anxiety (r = 0.42), depression (r = 0.42), and self-esteem (r = 0.43), suggesting that satisfaction at work can be meaningfully related to employee's mental health.

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  Industrial–Organizational Psychology: Science and Practice

  Wayne F. Cascio, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Personnel Psychology

  Personnel psychology is a subfield within I–O psychology. It is an applied discipline that focuses on individual differences in behavior and job performance and on methods of measuring and predicting such differences. Some of the major areas of interest to personnel psychologists include job analysis and job evaluation; recruitment, screening, and selection; training and development; and performance management.

  Job analysis is the study of the work to be done and the personal characteristics necessary to do the work. Job evaluation is the process of rank-ordering jobs in terms of their relative worth to an organization. Recruitment is a set of activities designed to attract talent to an organization. It may be internal to a firm (e.g., across departments or functional areas) or external (e.g., job fairs, university recruiting, company and specialized Web sites, social media). In the hiring process, screening refers to a rough, initial examination (e.g., based on minimum qualifications) designed to identify candidates for further consideration. Selection may involve a variety of methods and instruments, such as interviews, written or performance tests, personality measures, biographical information, reference checks, or background checks. In selecting among applicants for jobs, personnel psychologists are concerned with developing valid and reliable assessment methods that are fair to members of all groups. Their objective is to select applicants who are predicted to perform well on the job. Training and development activities involve learning experiences, planned by the organization, and designed to improve performance at the individual team, or organizational levels. Methods may include, for example, formal classroom instruction, online training, on-the-job training, outdoor training, role-playing exercises, team building, or behavioral simulations. Finally, performance management is a continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams, and of aligning performance with the strategic goals of an organization (Cascio and Aguinis, 2011).

  Personnel psychology also represents the overlap between psychology and human resource management (HRM). HRM is concerned with the management of staffing, retention, development, adjustment, and change in order to achieve both individual and organizational objectives (Cascio, 2013). As a subfield of HRM, personnel psychology excludes, for example, such topics as labor and compensation law, organization theory, industrial medicine, collective bargaining, and employee benefits. Psychologists have already made substantial contributions to the field of HRM; in fact, most of the empirical knowledge available in such areas as motivation, leadership, staffing, and performance management is due to their work.

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  Personality and Life Outcomes

  Michael C. Ashton, in Individual Differences and Personality (Third Edition), 2018

  9.6.4 The Problem of Faking

  When reading the previous section, you might have been surprised to learn that integrity tests (or other measures of personality) could show even a modest level of validity for predicting job performance. Many people find it almost difficult to believe that these instruments can predict job performance at all, because it seems very likely that job applicants would “fake” their self-report responses in such a way as to make a good impression on a prospective employer. In particular, it may seem strange that job applicants would admit, for example, to having stolen from a previous employer or to being an irresponsible or lazy or deceitful person.

  Apparently, people do tend to fake to some extent—or at least tend to be rather generous in giving themselves the benefit of the doubt—when taking integrity tests or personality inventories in personnel selection settings. One study tried to assess the extent of faking (also called “response distortion”) by comparing the self-report personality scores of two groups of people (Rosse, Stecher, Miller, & Levin, 1998). One group consisted of current employees who knew that their responses were being obtained for research purposes only and would not be seen by their employers. The other group consisted of job applicants who were applying for jobs similar to those of the current employees; these job applicants knew that their responses could be used by the employer to decide which applicants to hire. Note that there is no particular reason that there would be any systematic differences in personality trait levels, on average, between the employees and the applicants. Therefore, if the applicants showed much higher scores on socially desirable characteristics, this would suggest some degree of faking. This is exactly what Rosse et al. found: Across a variety of socially desirable characteristics, the self-report scores of the job applicants were, on average, nearly one standard deviation unit higher than were the self-report scores of the current employees. This suggests a fairly strong degree of response distortion among the applicants.

  Despite this response distortion among job applicants, however, the fact that integrity tests and personality inventories have at least some validity in predicting job performance suggests that the differences among people in their scores are still somewhat meaningful, and give a somewhat accurate reflection of their relative levels of integrity and related traits. Presumably, though, the validity of these instruments would be improved if faking could be entirely prevented. Several methods for reducing or detecting faking by job applicants are currently being used or investigated.

  For example, one method is to include some items that ask about moral lapses that presumably everyone has committed; persons who claim not to have performed these behaviors are then identified as having faked their responses. Scores on “faking scales” consisting of these items can be used to disqualify applicants or to “correct” their scores on the other scales, to estimate their real levels of various traits. Although such faking corrections are widely used, there are serious doubts about their effectiveness (Goffin & Christiansen, 2003). For example, as noted in Box 2.3, persons who really are highly virtuous might obtain high scores on scales intended to detect faking.

  Some evidence in support of this possibility comes from a study in which participants were instructed to complete various self-report scales—including an integrity test and a scale designed to detect faking—as if they were applying for a job (Cunningham, Wong, & Barbee, 1994). The participants had volunteered for the study in exchange for monetary payment, but at the end of the study, each participant was “accidentally” overpaid by the researchers, who were actually recording whether or not each participant would give back the extra money. Cunningham et al. found that participants with higher scores on the faking scale were actually more likely to pay back the extra money than were persons with lower faking scores. (Participants with higher integrity test scores were also more likely to pay back the extra money than were participants with lower integrity test scores, and the integrity test scores correlated positively with the faking scale scores.)

  Other methods that have been examined as potential ways to reduce faking include the use of time limits on applicants' responses (Holden, Wood, & Tomashewski, 2001) and the use of items that require respondents to indicate which of several equally desirable (or undesirable) statements describes them most accurately (Jackson, Wroblewski, & Ashton, 2000). Another potentially promising way of overcoming the problem of faking will involve the use of non-self-report methods of assessing personality. All of the results described earlier were derived from self-reports, but it is possible that observer reports from persons who would have little reason to “fake” on behalf of the applicant—for example, previous employers or coworkers—would show higher levels of validity in predicting job performance. In fact, some evidence suggests that personality ratings from coworkers or supervisors can be at least as valid in predicting job performance as are personality self-ratings on the same characteristics (Mount, Barrick, & Strauss, 1994). Future research on personality and job performance is likely to involve a greater focus on observer reports, and not just self-reports, of personality.

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  Pro-Environmental Behavior

  Deniz S. Ones, ... Rachael Klein, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015

  Jobs and Pro-Environmental Behaviors

  As economic activities evolve to incorporate capital and technological resources to address environmental sustainability needs of societies, labor demands also evolve. Embedding pro-environmental behaviors into jobs requires an understanding of job performance dimensions. Job performance is a multidimensional construct with a substantive general factor that spans across its higher order dimensions of task performance, organizational citizenship performance, and avoidance of counterproductive work behaviors (CWB; Viswesvaran and Ones, 2000). Rather than conceptualizing employee green behaviors as yet another performance dimension, we argue that environmental performance at the employee level can in fact span all of these dimensions. The degree to which such behaviors are considered task performance, citizenship performance, or counterproductive behaviors depends on their direction (positive/negative), target, and the nature of employees' job family and formal job duties.

  Green jobs refer to new and emerging occupations that arise to address environmental sustainability needs, particularly in the energy production industry (e.g., wind turbine technician). For these jobs, job performance includes green task performance as part of task performance, green citizenship behaviors as part of citizenship performance, and the avoidance of environmentally harmful behaviors or green CWB. Thus, in these jobs, employee green behaviors span across all three general performance dimensions.

  Greening jobs refer to occupations for which enhancements to skills are required to meet new sustainability-related demands (e.g., architects who need to acquire knowledge and skills for designing energy efficient buildings). For these jobs, green task performance demands are increased in level and/or variety. Citizenship behaviors directed at environmental sustainability and avoidance of CWB in the sustainability arena are also conceptualized as part of job performance.

  Greening economy jobs are traditional occupations for which demand is increasing to meet expanding green industry needs as economies are undergoing environmental sustainability transformations (e.g., clerical workers in recycling companies). For these jobs, no (or few) components of task performance are expected to focus on green task performance. However, there may be increased demand on employees to perform green citizenship behaviors and avoid green CWB, given green organizational focus and concerns.

  Finally, even for occupations that are not part of these taxonomic categories, the economic and cultural milieu of organizations focused on the triple bottom line mean that employee green behaviors increasingly are included as part of individual job performance, most notably in domains other than task performance. An important takeaway is that employee green behaviors can function as task performance, citizenship performance, or CWB depending on the occupation and industry. The content of the Green Five (summarized above) can permeate all job performance dimensions.

  What is the best predictor of job performance?

  The best predictors for good job performance are volunteering, putting in extra effort, cooperating, following rules and procedures, and endorsing organizational goals.

  What is the best single predictor of behavior of an employee?

  Conscientiousness. Most employers would agree that they prefer employees who are organized, act responsibly, meet deadlines, and plan ahead. These behaviors are all linked to a single trait: conscientiousness.

  Which element in Big 5 is the best predictor of job performance?

  According to Essentials of Organizational Behavior: 14^th Edition, the big five personality dimension that has the biggest influence on job performance is conscientiousness.

  What is the best predictor among employees for performance in training?

  Cognitive ability, which is also referred to as general mental ability (GMA), intelligence, or IQ, is one of the best (if not the best) predictors of employee performance.