Got Employer Image? How Applicants Choose Their Employer

This research investigates applicants’ preferences in employer choice to identify relevant components of employer image that are best to be communicated in employer branding. Based on the instrumental–symbolic attribute framework assumptions about the relative importance of the organizational characteristics salary, location, flexibility of working hours, task attractiveness, prestige, innovativeness, and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and their interrelations were tested in an empirical setting. Additionally, interindividual differences in career ambition were investigated as a moderating variable. To measure the actual decision behavior of N = 136 ongoing university graduates, Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC) Analysis was used. Based on the respondents’ preferences, the importance of each attribute was calculated and set in relation to one another. The results show that moderate attractive instrumental organization attributes form a precondition for symbolic attributes to become relevant at all. There is no evidence for a compensating relationship between instrumental and symbolic attribute classes. Career ambition shows some effects, especially on two-way interactions between instrumental and symbolic attributes. The innovative use of conjoint analysis in the instrumental–symbolic framework allowed to further investigate trade-off effects of attribute classes in the employer decision. The findings provide additional information on relevant elements of employer image and give suggestions for employer branding researchers and practitioners.