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.