Relationship Between Empathy Skill Levels And Job Selection: A Study On Business Administration Students

Abstract

Every person needs to earn money and take care of themselves in order to obtain and maintain their standards of living by finding a job that suits their needs and qualifications. Since their first educational period, each person has chosen different paths in their professional/educational life. In professional life, different jobs have different requirements. For example some jobs require more social and people skills than others. Empathy, which is our concern in this paper, is one of these people skills. As Lamont and Lundstrom (1977) define, empathy is the intellectual or imaginative apprehension of another's condition or state of mind without actually experiencing that person's feelings. This kind of skill may be required in certain types of jobs and when choosing the right job for right person or vice versa, people’s empathy levels must be considered both by the person himself and the human resource departments. This way, both the companies will have more productive employees and potential employees of a certain position will be more satisfied and successful. In this study we aim to search whether people are aware of their empathy levels and the relevancy of their people and social skills for the job that they choose. This study was held in Izmir University of Economics with survey method. Empathy skills and career choices of students were measured in order to research both managerial and academic implications.

Keywords

• empathy; job; human resources; job characteristics