Influence of New Work Attributes in Job Advertisements on Perceived Organizational Attractiveness

Abstract

Recruiting suitable talent has become increasingly difficult - including the recruitment of university graduates, members of the so-called millennial generation. Consequently, organizations are looking for ways to increase their organizational attractiveness. Many German companies are currently striving to implement the concept of new work with autonomy, meaningfulness, and self-actualization as its core attributes. While this concept has already drawn a lot of attention in the practitioner field, there is still a lack of controlled research on how these efforts affect organizational attractiveness for job seekers. This paper thus empirically investigates how millennials’ perception of organizational attractiveness is affected by the implementation of new work attributes in job advertisements. 214 business students participated in this experimental, randomized, preregistered two-group between-subjects design study. The results support the hypotheses that new work attributes in job advertisements significantly improve millennials’ appraisal of the perceived organizational attractiveness measured by perceived general attractiveness, intention to pursue and prestige of the organization. As expected, the effect was mediated by perceived person-organization fit. The study’s contribution lies in providing first empirical evidence for the positive effects of new work attributes on perceived organizational attractiveness.