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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.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relation between the dimensions of employer brand (EB) attractiveness and the intention to submit a job application to the organisation. An increase of competitiveness in the business world has resulted in an increased effort by organisations to improve the processes of recruitment and retention of talented professionals, as the human capital of organisations is extremely important for their growth and sustainability. Regardless of an organisation’s size, the difficulties faced in recruiting and retaining highly qualified human capital are tangible. In this sense, the research problem identifies EB as being a strategic element for attracting future employees to work for an organisation.

This study used both quantitative (a questionnaire survey) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) data to investigate the perceptions of future and current employees.

Evidence from 281 respondents (of which almost 60 per cent belong to the millennial generation) who participated in the quantitative study supports the multi-dimensionality of EB attractiveness, highlighting the importance of economic factors, such as an above-average salary or opportunities for promotion, which are seen to be less important to millennials when considering future job prospects. Interestingly, the results of the qualitative research for current employees show slightly different concerns, in that career progression appears to be crucial.

The study findings not only offer a basis for research on the dimensions of employer attractiveness, but also, they serve as a managerial guide towards enhancing companies’ ability to attract, retain and motivate talented individuals.

This review article offers an insight into employer brand and its importance for organizations, as well as an overview of international employer brand based on research on this topic available to date.

An examination and critical evaluation of 37 research articles, two scientific monographs and a chapter was conducted. The selection of articles was based on conducted content analysis.

Having an employer brand has become of utmost importance for many organizations since it was first described in academic literature in mid-1990s. Despite its key role in organizational success, there is a certain lack of recognition of employer brand in academic literature. While employer brand research is somewhat scarce, international employer brand research is almost non-existent. Organizations that operate on different international markets often recruit their employees internationally as well. However, employer brand developed and managed locally differs from the one developed and managed globally.

This review is based on a small number of articles available in the databases. Additionally, only the research papers written in English were included in the review.

This review paper offers a much-needed overview of literature on employer branding within international context. International employer brands and international employer branding have so far been neglected within employer branding literature, despite the obvious need for differentiation. Therefore, this article seeks to provide a systematic overview and identify relevant characteristics of the international employer brand.

Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated with the institutional logics of the corporation, the profession and the family, and tests for the influence of anticipatory socialization differences.

The study uses a discrete choice experiment with 232 business students. A hierarchical Bayes approach to conjoint analysis uncovers part-worth heterogeneity and allows for subsequent cluster and regression analysis of the choice data.

The findings identify a dominant job-oriented preference type and a minor career-oriented preference type. Anticipatory socialization through personal prior work experience and the occupation of friends decreases adherence to the logic of profession and increases the relevance of the family logic. The parents' occupation has only a minimal influence on preferences.

The study provides attribute-based recommendations on how professional service firms can effectively address the complex expectations of potential applicants in their job ads for an entry position and underlines the role of intra-generational reference groups as important anticipatory socializers.

By testing individual socialization effects at the pre-hire stage and beyond the organizational level, the study fills a void in both the recruitment and the institutional literature.

Brands are relevant to multiple stakeholders and, as such, can have multiple meanings. Drawing on branding and stakeholder marketing theory, the purpose of this study was to provide in-depth insights into knowledge dynamics related to the so-called family business brand across different stakeholder perspectives.

This study combines advanced brand concept mapping (BCM) with a scenario technique to graphically capture consumers’ and jobseekers’ brand knowledge related to the family business concept in the form of association networks.

Findings show both a shared core meaning (e.g. associations such as “tradition” or “owner-managed”) and stakeholder-specific associations (e.g. consumer perspective: “high product quality,” “handmade”; jobseeker perspective: “appreciation within the company,” “outdated”). Significantly, the results reveal detailed insights into cross-stakeholder knowledge dynamics regarding the associations’ interconnections, strength and favorability.

By combining BCM with a scenario technique, this study adopts an approach that is aimed at better understanding and comparing brand knowledge with respect to the family business brand across multiple stakeholder perspectives. Given the prevalence of family businesses, this research enhances the theoretical and practical understanding of a branding resource that is often available but rarely exploited.

The aim of the study is to assess the effect of employer branding dimension of training and development on the retention of employees through the mediation of organizational identification (OI).

The study is based on data collected from the Indian IT employees. Regression and PROCESS Macro were used to test the hypotheses.

The regression results revealed that employer branding attribute of training and development influence employee retention (ER). Second, training and development influences OI and ER. Third, the relationship between training and development and ER is mediated by OI.

The research provides a new direction, strategizing a brand around development value is effective to enhance OI and their intent to stay. The major limitation is that the data is collected from a single source that may result in the issue of common method biasness.

The paper focuses on measuring the effects of training and development on the retention of employees through the mediation of OI, for which studies are very limited.

The study aims to investigate the usage of diversity and inclusion (D&I) signals in communications for employer branding through digital channels made by European companies.

A quali-quantitative content analysis approach was employed to detect the usage of D&I signals of the top 43 European companies ranked in the 2021 Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion index. These signals were organized according to Plummer's Big 8 diversity's dimensions. A correlation analysis was conducted to verify a relationship between D&I initiatives and digital communication for employer branding on corporate websites and LinkedIn. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the D&I dimensions' pervasiveness in digital communications and relevance on LinkedIn.

The results show that the correlation exists only between D&I initiatives and communication on the corporate website, while LinkedIn is still underused in this field. The most pervasive and relevant D&I dimensions for European companies are “Gender” and “Sexual Orientation”.

This paper enriches employer branding research by providing original insights into the use of D&I dimensions in digital communications.

Social media management is an emerging profession that is growing as companies increasingly adopt social media. The purpose of this paper is to analyze social media managers’ personal branding.

In-depth qualitative data is drawn from 20 semi-structured interviews with social media managers and supported by three years of orienting fieldwork in Toronto, Canada.

Social media managers are responsible for managing and executing organizations’ brands and presence on social media and digital platforms. As lead users of social media, social media managers provide critical insight into the emerging practices of personal branding on social media. “The future audience” is introduced to describe how individuals project a curated brand for all future unknown and unanticipated audiences, which emphasizes a professional identity. Due to workplace uncertainty, social media managers embody the mentality of being “always-on-the-job-market”, which is a driver for personal branding in their attempt to gain or maintain employment.

While personal branding is largely discussed by industry professionals, there is a need for empirical research on personal branding that examines how various employee groups experience personal branding. This research fills this gap by analyzing how people working in social media brand their identity and how their personal branding is used to market themselves to gain and maintain employment. The development of “the future audience” and “always-on-the-job-market” can be used to understand other professions and experiences of personal branding.

Although the role of human capital in the hospitality sector is critical, the industry faces challenges in attracting workers with a poor industry image frequently mentioned regarding labor shortages. This research paper attempts to investigate the factors influencing labor shortages by presenting the perspectives of employees and employers.

Precisely 232 rural hospitality industry employees (n = 128) and employers (n = 104) in Northern Italy were surveyed using a written close-ended online survey and a quantitative research design as part of a convenience sampling approach. For hypotheses testing, Spearman's rho was used.

A relationship between the shortage of professional workers and a variety of factors was found, including professional, digital, social and green skills, industry-intrinsic characteristics and symbolic image attributes of the industry. The findings show that some factors are more important for employees, while others are more significant for employers.

This study demonstrates several practical implications for the hospitality sector by addressing the under-researched stakeholder group of existing hospitality employees, e.g. improving working conditions, reduction of manual operations through digital technologies, realistic career planning, employer branding, identification of skill deficiencies and provision of specialized trainings.

Most research on labor shortages in the hospitality industry has focused on the perspective of either employees or employers. This study compares both perspectives, including the industry image, to gain a realistic picture of the relevant factors for a rural tourism destination in Northern Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate branding and higher education literature to conceptualize, develop, and empirically examine a model of university social augmenters’ brand equity.

Drawing on an empirical survey of 401 undergraduate students enrolled in private universities in Egypt, this study model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that university social augmenters’ reputation, coach-to-student interactions, and student-to-student interactions influence students’ satisfaction with social augmenters. The results also suggest that students satisfied with university social augmenters are more likely to exhibit outcomes of brand equity – namely, brand identification, willingness to recommend, and willingness to incur an additional premium cost.

The results offer managerial implications for university administrators in their quest to enrich students’ university experiences and build strong sub-brands within the university setting. University social augmenters are found to have strong brand equity manifestations and may hold the potential to differentiate university brands in an industry dominated by experience and credence.

This research contributes to the extant literature by filling two gaps in university branding literature. First, previous research has never unified separate streams of literature related to augmented services and brand equity. Second, limited conceptual and empirical research on university branding in general and university social augmentation in particular has been conducted in emerging markets, which has resulted in conceptual ambiguity for the key factors constructing students’ university social experiences.