Portraying fitting values in job advertisements

Purpose – This paper aims to use the signaling theory and the person‐organization fit framework as a rationale to study value‐related information prospective applicants receive from employers through the communication in job ads. Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyzed the content of 1,768 job advertisements published in two national and two regional Dutch‐speaking magazines in Belgium. Four independent judges coded all information in the offer section and categorized it into five content categories adopted from Lyons and colleagues. Since important sectoral distinctions exist in terms of structural‐operational as well as value‐related characteristics, this study examines how profit and nonprofit organizations portray themselves in the offer section of the job advertisements they send out. Findings – Generally inconsistent with the authors' assumptions, the results show that intrinsic and prestige values are more intensively reported in job ads from the profit sector, whereas altruistic and extrinsic values are brought up more in job ads from the nonprofit sector. However, because nonprofit organizations print smaller, often non‐colored ads in the national language, additional analyses controlling for these factors confirmed only one of the sectoral differences. Nonprofit organizations seem to compensate for values that are obvious in their sector (i.e. altruistic and intrinsic) by more intensively emphasizing extrinsic values (e.g. insurance and fringe benefits) compared to profit organizations. Originality/value – Only part of the information provided in the earliest phase of the recruitment process reflects the values one would expect based on organizational theory and empirical evidence. This, obviously, engenders an important threat to the establishment of person‐organization fit.