IT Career Counseling: Are Occupational Congruence and the Job Characteristics Model Effective at Predicting IT Job Satisfaction?

The IT industry struggles to attract qualified talent despite an exceptional outlook in terms of both job availability and compensation. Similarly, post-secondary academic institutions report difficulties recruiting students for IT majors. One potential reason for this is that current career counsel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of information systems education 2018-09, Vol.29 (4), p.225-238
Main Authors: Carpenter, Darrell, Young, Diana K, McLeod, Alexander, Maasberg, Michele
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomy
Career Choice
Career Counseling
Career Development
Career development planning
Careers
Codes
Congruence (Psychology)
Counseling
Employee Attitudes
Employee motivation
Hypotheses
Influence
Information Technology
Information technology workers
Interest Inventories
Job Applicants
Job descriptions
Job qualifications
Job satisfaction
Job Skills
Likert scale
Majors (Students)
Mathematical models
Occupations
Personal Autonomy
Personality Measures
Prediction
Preferences
Professional Personnel
Researchers
Skills
Student Recruitment
Students
Supply and demand
Surveys
Talent
Vocational guidance
Vocational Interests
Wages & salaries
Work Attitudes
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Summary:The IT industry struggles to attract qualified talent despite an exceptional outlook in terms of both job availability and compensation. Similarly, post-secondary academic institutions report difficulties recruiting students for IT majors. One potential reason for this is that current career counseling practices do not adequately convey relevant job characteristic data to prospective job applicants and academic majors. Accordingly, we report the results of a survey of 72 IT professionals regarding their job interests and perceptions of important characteristics of their current job. We use the data to test the efficacy of Holland's classic occupation congruence model, the basis of current career counseling practices. In addition, we assess an alternate congruence model based on professionals' job perceptions and the Job Characteristics Model of Work Motivation (JCM) to determine which is more effective at predicting desired job outcomes. Results show that a sub-set of JCM constructs including task variety, task identity, and task autonomy is superior to both congruence models in predicting positive job outcomes. This suggests that IT career counseling outcomes might be improved by emphasizing the JCM characteristics.
ISSN:1055-3096
2574-3872