Study of Personality Type and Relationship With Job Selection Between Iranian and American Students

Today, continuous emergence of new jobs and elimination of old jobs have made a lot of problems for some individuals and in the meantime, developing countries transferring from traditional economy to world economy are more influenced by these changes. considering the importance of personality types and the role of culture in job selection, the current study was conducted aimed to examine personality types in students of iran and america. the study method was correlation. the statistical population consisted of all students at ferdowsi university of mashhad, iran and all the students at el-camino college, america in the academic year 2012-2013. the participants were selected using convenience sampling method. using cochran’s sample size formula, 320 students (170 iranian students and 150 american students) were selected from two universities and questionnaires were distributed among them. data collection tools included holland’s vocational personality questionnaire in six personality types of social, artistic, conventional, realistic, enterprising, and investigative that its validity and reliability have been confirmed in different countries. the obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistical indices, z-test and chi-squared test. the findings of the study showed that: 1) there was a significant relationship between iranian students' personality type and their job 2) there was compatibility between american students' personality type and their job 3) there was not a significant difference between correlation rate of personality type and job in two groups of iranian and american students. considering the obtained results, job selection by students in both iranian and american groups was not independent from their personality type.