Personality Factors and Social Influence on Career Choice: A Study on IT Professionals

Abstract

During the twilight zone of his infancy a man learns to enjoy the presence of others and to achieve his goals with others’ help and cooperation. A career is traditionally seen as a course of successive situations that make up a person’s work life. Students in the modern and fast changing world are trying to seek for those careers which would ultimately lead them to achieve fairly in life. Career choice is a major life decision. The aim of the present investigation is to study the personality factors and social influence on career choice of the students who want to choose their career as IT professionals in the near future. Accordingly, a group of 180 students (90 boys and 90 girls) and another group of 30 IT professionals (15 male and 15 female) were selected as sample in this investigation. General Information Schedule, Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and Social Influence Questionnaire were used as tools. The findings revealed that the students who want to choose their career as IT professionals are partially matched with those who are engaged in the profession for at least ten years. Besides this, there seems to be indication of social influence on career choice. Further monthly income takes an important role in this regard. Measures may be taken to choose a particular career appropriately by the students so that they can make their life healthy and also help the family and society in the near future