How recruiter coping styles and personality impact on job performance

The job of an Army recruiter has been shown in past research to be a very stressful and demanding occupation. Given these findings, it would seem important to investigate how recruiters typically cope with stress. However, there has been surprisingly little research on this topic. Individual differences in recruiter's personality have been found to be related to sales success, but less is known about the role coping may play in these personality-performance relationships.; Lazarus and Folkman (1984) proposed a model which postulates that in stressful circumstances coping mediates relationships between individual characteristics and outcomes. Within this framework, this research investigates relationships between Army recruiter's personality and coping styles, and how these individual differences, in turn, are related to job performance. A mediational model of personality, coping, and job performance will be used to test the interrelationships among these measures.; In this research, these relationships were investigated using a concurrent validation design in a nationwide sample of 329 recruiters. The dispositional version of the COPE (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) was used to measure two primary styles identified in the literature, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. Recruiter's temperament (personality) was measured by the Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM), an instrument that has been shown to be predictive of multiple aspects of job performance in the military (White & Young, 2001). Recruiter job performance was assessed using sales production data, supervisory and peer ratings of performance, and a situational judgment test.; Results indicated that individual differences in the personality characteristics of Work Orientation, Leadership, and Adjustment were positively related to the coping strategies of Active Coping, Planning, and Positive Reinterpretation and Growth. In addition, individual differences in recruiters' Work Orientation and Leadership were positively related to recruiters' job performance. Dispositional coping style as measured by COPE, was not a significant determinant of the subsequent job performance of Army recruiters. In regression analyses, Work Orientation and Positive Reinterpretation and Growth accounted for a statistically significant, but small portion of the variability in the job performance composite.