dc.description.abstract | Employee recruitment is critical to organizations because of the competition in the labor
market and the lack of well-educated workforce. Therefore, human resource
departments are interested in attracting the students and fresh graduates from top
universities. Research into the field of recruitment has provided evidence of Word-of-
Mouth (WOM) influencing organizations' attractiveness. This present study, employing
the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), aims to analyze and explore the impact of
WOM on organizational attraction. Data is collected from respondents who are
currently university students and fresh graduates in Ho Chi Minh city. We carried out
an online survey and obtained 314 valid responses. Validation of direct hypotheses was
conducted using the Structural equation modelling (SEM) in AMOS and moderating
effects were carried out using two techniques which are PROCESS macro in SPSS and
Multigroup analysis in SEM using AMOS. The study includes message quality of the
WOM message, source expertise, tie strength and prior job search experience of the
applicants as examining variables. Findings suggest that message quality and source
expertise are significant determinants of WOM’s effects, while tie strength and prior
job search experience are important moderators which play critical roles in applicants’
information-processing. By emphasizing the importance of Word-of-Mouth
information for job seekers, these findings are valuable to organizations at the
recruitment stage, through the understanding of WOM adoption process. In addition,
such results are relevant for career advisors that working with students at universities
and fresh graduates to understand the way they evaluate and make choices about job
pursuits.
Keywords
organizational attraction, job recruitment, job search experience, tie strength, source
expertise, message quality, university students | en_US |