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Employer branding (EB) has become a powerful tool for organizations to attract employees. Recruitment communication ideally reveals the image that companies want to portray to potential employees to attract talents with the right skills and competences for the organization. This study explores the impact of EB on employer attractiveness by testing how pre-existing employee preferences interact with EB and how this interaction affects employer attractiveness.

A quasi-experiment among 289 final-year students was used to test the relationships between EB, perceived employer image, person-organization (P-O) fit and employer attractiveness, and the potential moderating variables of pre-existing preferences, in this case operationalized as locational preferences. Students are randomly assigned to four vacancies: one with and one without EB cues in two different locations: Groningen and Amsterdam. The authors used standard scales for attractiveness, perceptions of an employer and person-organization fit. The authors test the relationships using a regression analysis.

Results suggest that if respondents have previous predispositions, then their preference can be enhanced using an EB-targeted strategy. Based on these results, the authors can conclude that EB and related practices can be successful avenues for organizations in the war for talent, particularly if they reaffirm previous preferences of potential employees.

The research is original in the way it provides empirical evidence on the relationship between EB and attractiveness, particularly when previous employee preferences exist. This is of value to employers using EB as a tool to influence employer attractiveness.

Rather recently, corporate volunteering (CV) has become a relevant topic of academic research. Nonetheless, there is still uncertainty about several aspects of the relationship between volunteerism and the corporate realm and research on the relationship between CV and employer attractiveness is scarce. This study aims to attempt to fill this gap by studying the influence that the perceived importance attributed by prospective applicants to the opportunity of engaging in CV programs may have on employer attractiveness while also pondering the existence of an indirect relationship between CV and employer attractiveness mediated by the individual cognition of corporate morality (CM).

To fulfill the objectives of this research, and test its hypothesized model, the authors opted to use a quantitative methodology via survey by questionnaire of Portuguese students who are close to entering the job-seeking process or are currently involved in it, either passively and actively. Data on 238 Portuguese students was collected mainly through social media channels such as LinkedIn and Facebook and was analyzed with the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software and the IBM SPSS AMOS extension, using a structural equation model to test the hypotheses and obtain insight into the relationships between the variables.

A theoretical model was elaborated based on the literature reviewed and was used to validate the existence of a positive direct relationship between CV and employer attractiveness, CV and CM and between CM and employer attractiveness. Finally, it was observed that CV could prompt an indirect effect on the socioethical perception of employer attractiveness, mainly due to the mediating mechanism of the individual cognition of CM.

This study has some limitations that should be acknowledged and considered in future studies, namely, the diversity of the sample, as it was essentially formed by students enrolled in the University of Porto and studying mainly in the areas of social sciences, trade and law. It is also worth noting that a global analysis of the employer attractiveness attributes was not considered, focusing instead on the social and ethical spectrum of employer attractiveness. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that different individuals prioritize distinct attractiveness attributes.

Through the present study, it was understood that CV programs constitute a desired and pertinent tool that should be adopted by firms (employers) to establish a strong position in the job market. These findings are particularly useful for the area of human resources management, which is in charge of finding the most adequate applicants in the job market. Furthermore, for the variable of CM, the authors noticed that there is a theoretical lack of measurement instruments. Consequently, the measure advanced in this study represents an important theoretical and methodologic contribution to the literature.

CV is a concept that is yet maturing within the Portuguese business environment. As such, this study delivers useful insights regarding Portuguese applicants’ growing interest around CV, their concerns about the social, ethical and humanitarian attributes of firms and their beliefs regarding the morality of firms’ social policies and actions. Hence, it allowed us to comprehend that by developing a structured CV program, an employer may be able to enhance other essential concepts for Portuguese prospective applicants, respectively, employer attractiveness and CM.

This study corroborates the premise that corporate community involvement activities, namely, CV, hold a positive effect in terms of perceived employer attractiveness. Moreover, it is consistent with the idea that CV programs foment a feeling of intimacy between individuals and firms, consequently creating a perception of morality as part of the firms’ intrinsic traits. Finally, it corroborates and extends for the case of prospective applicants the conclusion that individuals may be relatively more concerned with the motives behind firms’ corporate social responsibility practices than with the content of such practices.

Although researchers agreed that corporate image and employer image are important factors affecting organizational attractiveness, understanding the role of social identity within the attracting process, in addition to exploring the relationship between corporate image and employer image, is still a research gap. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of corporate and employer image on organizational attractiveness in addition to understanding the moderating role of social identity on the relationship between corporate image and employer brand and organizational attractiveness.

The study used a survey method for data collection from fourth year students.

The findings show that both employer image and corporate image have a significant positive effect on organizational attractiveness . In addition, it has showed that social identity consciousness plays partial role as a moderator in the model.

This paper is one of the first papers that include corporate image, employer image, social identity consciousness and organizational attractiveness in the same model . In addition, it is one of the limited papers that considered both signal and social identity theory in attraction process.

Job information through word-of-mouth (WOM) has a crucial impact on employer attractiveness. The phenomenal rise of social media offers alternate WOM platforms for sharing job information, which is quite different from traditional face-to-face WOM. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential impact of traditional word-of-mouth (t-WOM) and social media word-of-mouth (s-WOM) on employer attractiveness along with the difference in the job attributes and relationship strength with the information source.

A 2 × 2 × 2 experiment was conducted to examine the impact of information source (t-WOM and s-WOM), job attributes (tangible and intangible) and relationship strength (strong and weak), on employer attractiveness. Source expertise and source trust were treated as the control variable.

The result shows the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness. Moreover, t-WOM from strong relation source found to have a high impact on employer attractiveness than s-WOM. No significant difference due to job attributes was found.

Use of only positive WOM and not the negative one, student as the subjects, etc.

The present study suggests using t-WOM and s-WOM to attract talented job seekers.

This is the first study to analyze the differential impact of t-WOM and s-WOM on employer attractiveness.

The article aims to provide a discussion of societal norms concerning “attractiveness,” the existence of appearance discrimination in employment, the presence of “preferring the pretty”, and then the authors examine important civil rights laws that relate to such forms of discrimination. Finally, the authors apply ethical theories to determine whether such discrimination can be seen as moral or immoral.

It is a legal paper which covers all the laws related to discrimination based on look. Court cases and Americans laws related to this concept are reviewed and critically discussed.

The paper finds that appearance‐based discrimination is not illegal in the USA so long as it does not violate civil rights laws.

This research is limited to Federal and State laws in the USA and may not be relevant in other countries as the local laws might vary.

Managers and employees can protect themselves in the workplace from illegal discriminatory practices.

Employees know their rights and enhance their understanding of laws related to appearance, attractiveness, and why companies look to hire those who are considered “handsome”, “pretty” and “beautiful”.

This is an original and comprehensive paper by the authors.

To deal with the agenda of extensive research to establish employer branding as a valuable Human Resource (HR) practice, this study aims to examine perception of seafarer to explore the attributes related with employer branding in maritime industry. This study intends to explore the applicability of instrumental-symbolic framework of employer branding in maritime industry to understand the dimensions related with attractiveness of seafarers’ jobs.

Sample of the study is Indian seafarers include only officers from both deck and engine. Total 276 usable responses were considered at the end for data analysis.

Both, the instrumental and symbolic attributes explained significant variance in predicting attractiveness of seafarers’ occupation, thus supporting hypotheses 1 and 2. In particular, among instrumental dimensions, social/team activities, structure, advancement, travel opportunities and pay and benefits positively predicted seafarers’ attraction towards their job. As symbolic dimension, sincerity, competence and prestige was positively related, and ruggedness was negatively related to attractiveness of the present job among seafarers.

Overall, the present findings ascertain the utility of the framework as a conceptualization of employer brands and support the applicability of instrumental-symbolic framework for understanding the dimensions of occupational attractiveness in different context and culture, i.e. Indian Seafarers.

Although the popularity of employer branding is growing amongst human resources practitioners, but still, there is dearth of academic (mainly empirical research) literature on the subject, `appeals to management researchers (Cable and Turban, 2001; Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004, Edwards, 2009; alniacik and alniacik, 2012; Kucherov and Zavyalova, 2012). With this in consideration and to deal with the agenda of extensive research to establish employer branding as a valuable HR practice, the present study examines perception of seafarer to explore the attributes related with employer branding in maritime industry.

The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between employee-generated content (EGC) and firm-generated content (FGC) in the form of LinkedIn posts, employer brand perception, and the effect of employer's attractiveness and corporate reputation on this relationship.

This study comprises two phases. In phase 1, the focus was on stimuli selection through an online questionnaire on favourability. In phase 2, for the main study, data were gathered through an online survey from 214 information technology (IT) employees via a survey. Multiple linear regression and mediation analyses were conducted.

The results show that EGC and FGC have a positive influence on employer brand perception, and the relationship is positively mediated by employer attractiveness and corporate reputation. These findings suggest that organizations can strategically use their own as well as employees' LinkedIn accounts, and encourage employee advocacy initiatives to attract new talent, enhance attractiveness and corporate reputation.

The study covers two different categories of content – employer and employee-generated – and examines both content types' influence on employer brand perception. It adds to the body of literature regarding employee branding and paves the way for further research in employee advocacy.

While the information source is likely to affect job search process, it is still unknown how the information source interacts with the information content and information valence. In this study, first, the authors examine the influence of information source, information content, and information valence on employer attractiveness and job pursuit intention; and second, the authors estimate the interaction of information source with content and valence of information on employer attractiveness and job pursuit intention.

The authors adopted a 2 (information source: company-independent vs company-dependent) x 2 (information content: instrumental vs symbolic) x 2 (information valence: positive vs negative) between-subject factorial design to achieve the study’s research objectives, using a sample of 240 job applicants; and applied multivariate analysis of covariance for estimating the main and interaction effects.

The authors find a significant interaction of information source with the content and valence of information, indicating a differential effect of content and valence, depending on the information source. The study reveals that the effect of information content (i.e. symbolic vs instrumental) on employer attractiveness varies depending on the source of information (i.e. company-independent vs company-dependent), with the company-independent source having a higher effect than the company-dependent source.

Considering that the information source has a differential effect on job seekers, it would be useful to account for such differences in designing recruitment communications. Results guide managers in deciding the appropriate recruitment information outlet for communicating symbolic and instrumental attributes. The use of symbolic attribute content is recommended for generating favourable evaluations about an employer.

This study is a novel attempt to examine on how information source interacts with information content type and information valence in influencing recruitment outcomes. The authors provide valuable insights to human resource managers or employer brand managers to design effective recruitment communications and leverage the company-independent information sources appropriately.

The importance of employer branding to attract talent in organizations is increasing rapidly. Brand personality traits, particularly, have been shown to explain considerable variance in employer brand attractiveness. Despite such awareness, little is known about the underlying processes of this effect. The purpose of the authors is to close the research gap by drawing on a consumer brand model of brand affect and trust as a means of explaining employer brand attractiveness.

Students interested in working in the consultancy industry completed a survey designed to evaluate consultancy employer brands. Established scales for brand personality, trust, and affect, and employer brand attractiveness were used to test the conceptual model.

The results indicate that employer brand trust and affect are both influenced by the brand personality trait sincerity. Further, employer brand affect was positively affected by the traits excitement and sophistication, while negatively affected by ruggedness. Together, employer brand affect and trust explain 71 per cent of the variance in employer brand attractiveness.

While the results show the importance of branding an organization as a sincere, exciting, and sophisticated employer, future research is needed to identify adequate marketing tools to achieve this goal, also in other industries besides the one investigated here.

This study is the first to apply a model that includes brand personality, trust, and affect to employer branding. By doing so, the variance explained in employer brand attractiveness could be increased substantially.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of authenticity as a possible attribute of employer attractiveness. Additionally, the study compares authenticity to other factors of attractiveness, such as economic, development, social, interest and application values.

A survey was conducted with a total of 937 respondents. The questionnaire consisted of the employer attractiveness scale developed by Berthon, Ewing, and Hah (2005) and an adapted version of the authentic living scale (Wood et al., 2008).

The results show that workplace authenticity is equally valued as an attractiveness attribute as having opportunities for economic and personal development, and that it is significantly more highly valued than other attractiveness dimensions of the work environment, such as interest value, social value, and application value. The results also show that authenticity matters more as an attribute of attractiveness for top management, older professionals as well as women.

The findings suggest that firms become more competitive in attracting talent if their recruitment strategies place more emphasis on authenticity as a psychological benefit that can be obtained through working in the company. The use of social media (e.g. employee testimonials, chats, and blogs) can help to this end.

The subject of workplace authenticity has been receiving increasing attention in the academic literature, and the studies reveal the benefits that it may entail for both developing and retaining a more engaged and productive workforce. However, previous research has not considered how perceptions of workplace authenticity may also help organizations become more attractive in the eyes of potential job applicants.