The psychological dynamics of job-seeking | Ability to focus on goal resides within individuals

With a number of economic indicators providing hopeful news, a new study that probes the psychological dynamics of job-seeking offers an additional reason for encouragement for the unemployed.

The new research in the current issue of The Academy of Management Journal provides a rare look at the ebb and flow of emotions among 177 jobless people over the course of up to 20 weeks, and finds that, to a surprising extent, important factors to the success of the job search are within the grasp of the individuals themselves.

Most critically, perhaps,  53% of the variance that the researchers uncovered in motivation control, the ability to focus on goal pursuit while persisting in overcoming obstacles, was found to reside within individuals rather than between them. The variance, in other words, reflected week-to-week flux in people’s job-search experiences more than inherent character traits distinguishing one job-seeker from another.

Thus the importance of “training individuals to employ self-regulation strategies that ‘pump up’ attentional effort for job search activities,” in the words of the study, which was carried out by Connie R. Wanberg of the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota, Jing Zhu of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Ruth Kanfer of Georgia Institute of Technology, and Zhen Zhang of Arizona State University.

In a similar vein, the study also reveals that 41% of the variance in what the researchers called self-defeating cognition, the self-talk engendered by feelings of hopelessness and defeat in the job search, is within rather than between individuals — that is, reflects daily or weekly fluctuations rather than inherent differences between job-seekers.

Comments Prof. Wanberg, a leading researcher on the job-search process, “Both motivation control and the ability to keep self-defeating thoughts at bay are strongly related to the amount of effort devoted to the job search, which in turn is strongly related to success in landing a job. It is encouraging that both competencies are as widely distributed as this study suggests.”

The study exemplifies a relatively new approach to research on job-seeking that involves moving beyond longitudinal investigation, in which typically people are surveyed at one point in time and their answers are analyzed with respect to an outcome at a later point in time. The more recent approach probes, instead, “self-regulation…the extent to which individuals are able to successfully modulate their emotions, attention, effort, and performance during goal-directed activity.”

Source:

Read More @ AOM Press Release — Full Display.

Related articles

• Smart Social Media Helps Jobs Find You | More Than 15% of Workers Get Hired Through Social Networks (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• Social Media | How they can helph College Students in Job Search (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• 6 ways the job search has changed post-recession : The Work Buzz (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• Brand-New Jobs Site HireSmartz.com Connects Job Seekers to Open Positions (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• The Top 3 Mistakes Job Seekers Will Make on Facebook Timeline (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• What Employers Want from the Long-Term Unemployed – Brent Rasmussen – Harvard Business Review (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• Jobs Search | Call Employers (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• Upload Profile Pictures Add Personal Skills Get Job Interview (jobmarketmonitor.com)
• U.S. | Odds of finding a job decreases substantially with the length of time spent searching (jobmarketmonitor.com)