Effect of Online Professional Network Recommendations on the Likelihood of an Interview: A Field Study

Rohit Aggarwal (), Vishal Midha () and Nicholas Sullivan ()
Additional contact information
Rohit Aggarwal: David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Vishal Midha: College of Business, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61761
Nicholas Sullivan: School of Business Administration, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio 45469

Information Systems Research, 2024, vol. 35, issue 1, 104-119

Abstract: Online professional networks (OPNs) are an increasingly common tool used by recruiters to find and vet qualified job candidates for open positions. These sites allow users to publish recommendations given by other users to supplement their profile information and add credibility to the information provided. OPN recommendations provide a rich source of information to recruiters. Unlike recommendations shared in other ways (non-OPN recommendations), OPN recommendations are publicly accessible, and candidates have full control over which recommendations they show to others. Despite the role OPN profiles play in the recruiting process, there has been a lack of research into the specific effect of OPN recommendations, how the impact of OPN recommendations differs from non-OPN recommendations, and how they can best be used to maximize the likelihood of candidates receiving interviews. First, we theoretically conjecture why recommendations that reveal a candidate’s weakness will have different effects on the likelihood of interview depending on whether the weakness is expected or unexpected and how that difference depends on how the recommendation is presented (OPN versus non-OPN). Then, we establish that the effectiveness of a recommendation is higher when presented as a non-OPN recommendation than as an OPN recommendation and show that OPN recommendations benefit more from discussing an expected weakness than non-OPN recommendations. Data were collected from a field study leveraging the candidate tracking system of a large recruitment firm.

Keywords: field study; online professional networks; OPN recommendations; perceived trustworthiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.1053 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orisre:v:35:y:2024:i:1:p:104-119

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Information Systems Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().