The five key things that attract applicants to your organization
Hiring is a key component of an organizational talent management system. Despite this, however, little empirical information is known regarding the best practices of recruiting. Fortunately, in a recent review article, a group of researchers examined the predictors of applicant attraction at the different stages of the recruiting process: generating applicants, maintaining applicant status, and influencing job choices.
Across 232 research studies, the researchers discovered that:
- Perceived fit with the organization was the strongest factor influencing applicant attraction.
- Recruiter behaviors (e.g., competence, personableness, informativeness, etc.) were major elements of attraction during the generating applicants and maintaining applicant status stages.
- Organizational characteristics (e.g., image of company, work environment, company size and location, etc.) heavily influenced attraction during the applicant status stage.
- Recruitment processes (e.g., reactions to the recruitment and selection procedures) grow in importance as applicants progress through the hiring process.
- Job characteristics (e.g., work and compensation) were the strongest influencers of job choice decisions.
In terms of implications, the researchers regarded that:
[note color=”#B6D6F0″]Recruiters should spend their first recruitment dollar focusing on fostering perceptions of fit through message content. Incremental recruitment dollars should be spent on enhancing recruiter behaviors at the early stages of recruiting, fostering favorable recruitment processes, and on promoting favorable organizational characteristics to foster attraction at later recruitment stages.
[/note]These strategies, coupled with a competency-based talent managements system, will help ensure an organization is acquiring, leveraging, developing, and retaining top talent.
To read the full article, please visit Personnel Psychology.