How Do Executives Get Better Jobs?

The occupational personality profiles of 101 redundant senior executives were related to their job‐hunting success using psychometric tests (16PF and a management interest inventory). Job‐hunting success was defined in terms of time taken to get a new job, new salary package,and increase over last benefit package. Average age of the sample was 42.4 years and executives had spent an average of 11.8 years with their last organization. Time to get a new job ranged between 1 and 12 months and averaged 3.9 months. Findings suggest that executives who were more intelligent, assertive, sensitive to others, resilient, well‐motivated,and who were relatively more experienced were significantly more effective at getting better jobs.