Understanding job and organizational attributes as signals from recruitment advertisement

Purpose: The study aims to understand the signaling effects of two major recruitment advertisement (ad) contents – job attributes and organizational attributes (OA) – on the perceptions and application intentions (AIs) of potential job seekers. Design/methodology/approach: A fictitious faculty job ad based on existing real ads was created as a stimulus and the responses to the ad were collected from 270 job seekers of the academic domain in India. The partial least square-structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothetical relationships. Findings: Drawing from the concept of signaling theory and instrumental-symbolic framework, the results revealed that job attributes and OA exhibit strong signals that generate the following perceptual outcomes in a job seeker – organizational attractiveness, attitude and person-organization fit. These perceptual outcomes mediated effectively to induce an AI in a job seeker. Signals from information on job attributes had a more significant effect on the job seeker than signals from information on OA. Practical implications: The outcome of the study provides preparatory guidelines to academicians, institutional recruiters and recruitment agencies in posting an effective job ad. Originality/value: From an Indian context, this is the first paper to present distinctive job advertising strategies to be implemented in the academic institutional recruitment communication.