These traits are extraversion, conscientiousness, and leadership experience. While extraversion is a personality trait that has largely nothing to do with one's biography, the other two characteristics can be explained in part by biography. What the study found was that each trait was correlated with success in job interviews. This implies that the candidate was viewed as superior to others, presumably because the candidate would be able to generate more profit per hour than other employees, which is a base measure of productivity.
Analysis
The role that different biographical traits play in productivity is still under study. There is evidence that gender to some extent plays a role, and this should be considered by managers. Other biographical traits are generally not as important as assumed, and there is conflicting evidence with respect to age/tenure. Most interesting is the influence of family history. Families have passed professions down from one generation to another for centuries, and it is interesting to see how that this results in increased productivity. Presumably, the knowledge that one generation gains is passed to the next generation, allowing the younger worker to be more productive from the outset than other workers of the same age.
Conclusion
Biography as an influence on productivity has generally been an understudied area, and consequently the literature is underdeveloped. What literature there is can be sometimes conflictive, and is subject to significant stereotyping in industry. What study of the issue can do is eliminate the sociocultural biases that color our interpretations of the issue of biographical influences on productivity. For example, gender appears on the surface to have a high correlation with lower productivity. However, in recent examples where females avoid the typical child-rearing role or in situations where males undertake this role, we can see that the female gender is in fact not correlated with low productivity -- it is only the social roles commonly ascribed to females that are correlated with a decrease in productivity.
There are a number of implications for management of this area of study. Legally, many biographical elements...
Family history in the industry for example is correlated with higher productivity. Specific personality traits such as conscientiousness and leadership experience, both of which bear some correlation to one's biographical characteristics, are also correlated with higher productivity outputs. As a result of this, companies can screen for these biographical traits and begin to hire on the basis of these traits.
Biographical traits are an interesting proposition for companies because of the way that they blend legal elements associated with demographics and those that are not subject to legal consideration. It is worth considering that companies can blend these elements together in their hiring policies, using biographical traits as a screening mechanism that work as a proxy for demographic elements that are normally not allowed to be included in hiring criteria.
The drive for increased productivity has placed increased emphasis on the human resources function to identify those employees most likely to succeed in the company, industry or business environment. This has led companies to be more particular with respect to their screening processes, so that they can target their hiring policies towards only those with the biographical characteristics that fit with employees who will typically deliver higher productivity.
Works Cited
Management Guidebook. (2010). Biographical characteristics. Management Guidebook. Retrieved December 3, 2010 from http://www.management-guidebook.org/biographical-characteristics.htm
Soethout, M.; Heymans, M. & ten Cate, O. (2008). Career preference and medical students' biographical characteristics and academic achievement. Medical Teacher. Vol. 30 (1) e15-e22.
Tay, C.; Ang, S. & van Dyne, L. (2006). Personality, biographical characteristics and job interview success: A longitudinal study of the mediating effects of interviewing self-efficacy and the moderating effects of internal locus of causality. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 91 (2) 446-454.
