Importance of personality and career stress for flight attendants' career satisfaction

We examined flight attendants’ career satisfaction and addressed how career stress affects the relationship between personality and career satisfaction. After conducting a focus group interview with 6 flight attendants and 3 senior flight attendants and a pilot study with 122 employees of a large airline corporation in Taiwan to develop the Career Stress Scale, we examined the validity of a model that underlies the dispositional effects of extraversion and neuroticism on flight attendants’ career stress and satisfaction (N = 152). The results demonstrated that extraversion had a significant and positive effect on career satisfaction, and that career stress played a mediating role in linking neuroticism and career satisfaction. We confirmed that considerable emphasis must be continually placed on the process of recruiting and selecting appropriate candidates whose extraversion has reached a high level. Also, the Career Stress Scale can be used in workplace counseling and employee assistance programs to achieve stress management and employee empowerment.