A study of person-job fit in front office employees in midwestern hotels

The main goal of this work is to study the interaction between personality and organization, known as person-environment fit, and the extent to which the right fit can improve the selection process within the hospitality industry. It will examine the compatibility of individuals to the given environment from the point of view of job demands, more specifically person-job fit. Though prevalent in management and psychology fields for many years, person-job fit has never been explored in the context of the hospitality industry. Its popularity in other sciences and industries comes from the fact that person-job fit, broadly defined as the match between individual knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) and demands of the job, has been found to be an important tool in personnel selection. This study is the first attempt to justify the use of person-job fit as an effective and powerful tool for selection of nonmanagerial hotel employees. This study focuses on front-office employees as representative group of non-managerial hotel employees. The results of multiple regression analysis in this study identified a significant relationship between the categories of person-job fit (knowledge; skills and abilities; attitudes towards work preferences; attitudes towards service orientation; attitudes towards positive problem solving; and attitudes towards change) on the one side and job satisfaction and intent to quit on the other side in front office employees. Job satisfaction was found to be a good predictor for the intent to quit in front office employees. Also, no difference was found between an established person-job fit test by Cable and DeRue (2005) and Hospitality Perceived Person-job Fit (HPPJF) survey, created for this study. Results from this study suggest that person-job fit is an effective predictor of post-entry outcome variables in front office hospitality employees. Adding person-job fit to the selection process will help to identify service-oriented front office employees with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes necessary to perform their everyday responsibilities and help to eliminate those upfront who are most likely to leave the job