Hype matters applicant attraction: Study on type of publicity and recruitment advertising

This research studies the effects of publicity and recruitment advertising on applicant attraction. With manipulating publicity and recruitment advertisements design, participants with between-group designs were randomly assigned to groups. This study used a fictitious company and designed publicity and recruitment advertisements to understand which recruitment advertisement could improve applicants’ organizational attractiveness while it received varying publicity. The results reveal that detailed recruitment advertisement was associated with higher advertisement truthfulness, advertisement informativeness, appropriateness, attitude toward the advertisement, and the organizational attractiveness. When receiving negative publicity, detailed recruitment advertisement could further improve applicants’ organizational attractiveness. Besides, negative rather than positive publicity interferes with the impact of recruitment advertisement to a greater extent.