Premium
Employer Branding and Recruitment: Social Media Field Experiments Targeting Future Public Employees
Author(s) -
Keppeler Florian,
Papenfuß Ulf
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.13324
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , public relations , social identity theory , public sector , field (mathematics) , job security , public interest , political science , business , demographic economics , marketing , social psychology , psychology , social group , economics , work (physics) , engineering , mechanical engineering , mathematics , communication , law , pure mathematics
Abstract Public sector recruitment is an urgent and prevailing challenge in both research and practice. Public employer branding is an important subject in the theoretical debate , but the mechanisms behind how certain signals of public employers affect individuals' interest in a job are under‐researched. By bridging signaling theory , social identity theory , and personnel economics , this study analyzes the effects of signals in advertisements related to societal impact , job security , and performance orientation on different gender/age‐based target groups. This series of pre‐registered social media field experiments (n = 196 , 822 persons) with four public employers examines the degree to which these signals affect individuals' interest in a job at a public employer. The results do not show an overall impact of the signals but target group‐specific effects—gender has a significant effect and age for certain public employers. Compared with the societal impact signal , the job security signal has a slightly stronger effect.