J Arch Mil Med. 2014 August; 2(3): e21120. DOI: 10.5812/jamm.21120 Published online 2014 August 13. Research Article Personality Traits of Admitted Students to an Asian Military University Compared to Their Future Job Requirements Vahid Donyavi 1 ; Arsia Taghva 1,* ; Masoud Azizi 2 ; Hasan Shahmiri 1 ; Majid Asgharzadeh 3 ; Ahmad Pourmandani 3 1 Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Disaster and Military Psychiatry Research Center, AJA University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran 2 ’Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tehran, IR Iran 3 Department of Psychology, Farabi University, Tehran, IR Iran *Corresponding author: Arsia Taghva, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Disaster and Military Psychiatry Research Center, AJA University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran. Tel: +98-22481806, Fax: +98-2188675806, E-mail: drarsiataghva@irimc.org Received: June 12, 2014; Revised: July 20, 2014; Accepted: July 25, 2014 Background: Setting Military recruitments to training programs intended for individuals wishing to work in the military, security or intelligence services is a very sensitive task. The identification of the applicants’ personality traits, skills and abilities constitutes an importance part of the recruitment procedure. Objectives: The present study attempted to identify the major characteristics the military force must possess, as well as the current candidates candidates' suitability in terms of their personality characteristics. Patients and Methods: The authorities at an Asian country army were interviewed in order to identify the major characteristics they believed to be necessary for the military personnel willing to work in that organization. Furthermore, 195 randomly selected students from a military training center in the same region were examined to reveal the extent to which their personality traits matched those specified by the experts. Results: It was observed that the majority of the students who were tested enjoyed a good status regarding personality traits relevant to the nature of the tasks they were to be assigned in the future. However, based on the participants’ scores on the NEO Psychological Inventory, Revised, some individuals were identified as lacking the needed personality traits and as a result, were not suitable for such responsibilities. Conclusions: The obtained results indicated that the existing admission procedure was not efficient and needed to be revisited. More psychological tests and background checks need to be included in the admission procedure. In addition, a thorough needs analysis should be done in order to identify the major characteristics such applicants should possess in order to be successful in that profession after they are finished with their education. Keywords: Personality; Personnel Recruitment; Personality Traits; NEO Personality Inventory Copyright © 2014, AJA University of Medical Sciences; Published by Kowsar Corp. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1. Background Human resources have always been considered as the main axis for development in any organization. It is only the human resources who can help an organiza- tion move forward by being thoughtful and creative. The more important and sensitive an organization, the need for having skill ful staff. However, it is clear that not all individuals are similar in their characteristics, abilities and personality. As a result, some people may not be ap- propriate for certain jobs while some others are more likely to succeed in the same responsibilities. Although many variables are involved, it seems that in most cases the major variable playing a role in distinguishing indi- viduals from each other is their personality. According to Holland (1), job satisfaction is the result of the correspon- dence between one’s type of personality and his work- ing environment. The more the two match, the more satisfied an individual feels. However, due to its diverse applications, Reber (2) considers personality very resis- tant to definition. Reber claims that presenting a single unified definition for personality is impossible because each scholar and psychologist defines it differently based on the area in which they are using this concept. For in- stance, Allport (3) listed 50 different definitions for the concept of personality. These definitions range in domain from one’s internal processes to observable behaviors resulting from one’s interaction with the environment (4). In 1936, Allport and Odbert (5) worked on the adjec- tives listed in English dictionaries. They identified more than 18,000 adjectives and tried to categorize them. Their study formed the framework for the lexicology of person- ality. Cattell (6), working on the same adjectives, could reduce them to 4,500 adjectives which he categorized into 35 personality traits. Fiske (7) could later reduce those 35 factors to 22 traits, very similar in structure to the Big Five personality traits we know today. These fac- tors were repeated in other psychologists’ studies in the