The Big Five Personality refers to the structures and propensities of people that explain their patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. Although there are literally thousands of traits that can be used to describe an individual's personality, most traits reflect one of five broad dimensions or factors of personality: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. It is especially useful for managers to understand the personality traits of their employees since these traits often have important implications for workplace attitudes and behaviors, such as performance and commitment. The following activity takes you through the thought process of a manager trying to hire a new sales associate based on personality assessments of the candidates. Imagine that you are a midlevel manager at a paper company and you are in the process of hiring a new sales associate. So far, you have scheduled interviews with three potential candidates. You just concluded your first interview and want to spend some time reflecting on the notes you took. In particular, you want to make sure that you have a solid grasp of each candidate's personality traits since you know how important that can be on the job. Read through the notes and classify them according to the Big Five Taxonomy of personality. Conscientiousness Agreeableness Neuroticism Took Initiative Openness to Experience Cold Hardworking Extraversion

The big five taxonomy of personality refers to the "Big five" personality traits believed to be the traits on which many different personalities of people revolve. They include:extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

In the example above, based on the manager's interview with Cynthia. The manager can understand her personality by classifying using the big five personality traits based on information gathered from her and recommendations:

Cynthia took initiative: this falls under openness which are people who are creative and adventurous and like to learn new things

Cynthia could be hardworking: this falls under conscientiousness characterized by people who are generally organized and careful about things

Cynthia follows procedures: this falls under agreeableness which is the tendency to be trust and be cooperative

Cynthia seemed nervous: this falls under neuroticism which is the tendency for one to be emotionally unstable and usually have mood swings, anxiety or be sad

Cynthia was described as cold: this is also fall under neuroticism as Cynthia could be depressed