Investigation of the Effect of Accounting Student's Personality Characteristics on Career Interests in Auditing and their perceptions of the ideal auditor

People are looking for a job that they are interested in and try to match their abilities with the job they are looking for. In this study, using the Big five model of Personality, the concept of the person-job fit, and the accounting students' career intersts in auditing has been investigated. The present study is quantitative and is included in the descriptive research group .International Personality Item Pool has been used to collect data. The sample included 146 students in the first semester of the year 2018-2019. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regressions. The results show that there is a gap between the accounting students’ own personality traits and their perceptions of the ideal auditor. Students who perceived auditors as more open to experience and more neurotic had a greater desire to work in auditing. Also, accounting students higher on Conscientiousness and openness to experience, tend to view auditing as their ideal career. Finally, accounting students who prefer the auditing career path perceive the ideal auditor as extroverted, agreeable, and open to experience and perceive these personality factors as important and crucial for auditing.