The influence of personality on recruitment advertising effectiveness

Abstract

Attracting talented candidates and aligning individual goals with corporate strategy is a prominent and pressing issue for most Maltese companies, irrespective of which type of industry they operate in. Human assets are considered a key source of sustainable advantage because of casual ambiguity and systematic information making them inimitable (Coff, 1994). Subsequently, understanding what elements of a job advert attract what type of candidates would potentially provide fundamental insights for human resources managers and recruitment specialists, and would help in positively addressing these recruitment challenges. In today’s globalised business world, organisations cannot afford to implement standardised methods to attract potential jobseekers, which highlights the importance of investing in research to study recruitment advertising effectiveness. This, however, opens up the basis of the argument to include another important question - should companies focus on attracting the maximum number of talented candidates or should they refine and customise job adverts to attract the best suited candidates for the role being advertised? This exploratory study examines the influence of personality traits and preferred job categories on recruitment advertising effectiveness. It was conducted using a quantitative method with an online survey that was aimed to answer 5 key research questions. Results suggest that organisations may increase the quantity and quality of applicants by including an image background rather than a plain one, by adding not a generic but a more personal message, by including a salary bracket and by using ‘Apply Now’ as a call to action within their job adverts. Furthermore, the analysis of the survey results indicates, for example, that individuals scoring high on the neuroticism scale are more likely than average to apply for a job if the advert includes a motivational message and ‘Apply Now’ as a call to action, while, on the other hand, they suggest that individuals with a high level of agreeableness are more likely than average to be attracted to job adverts that include a personal message. Moreover, links were extracted between socio-demographic variables and personality, such as the level of conscientiousness was higher amongst older individuals. All this proves that personality does indeed come into play within the recruitment platform, both in the personal choice of job category, as well as what elements of recruitment adverts get the most attention from which personality type.