How do Potential Applicants Make Sense of Employer Brands?

Manfred Auer (), Gabriela Edlinger and Andreas Mölk
Additional contact information
Manfred Auer: University of Innsbruck
Gabriela Edlinger: University of Innsbruck
Andreas Mölk: UMIT TIROL

Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 73, issue 1, 47-73

Abstract: Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate processes of subjective employer brand interpretations. We draw on the first-person perspectives of sought-after applicants who articulated their thoughts while being exposed to employer brand material and on subsequent in-depth interviews with the study participants about their assessments of the various employers’ attractiveness. Sensemaking as a theoretical framework to understand meaning-making in processes of actors’ engagement with artifacts is employed to analyze this qualitative data. Based on our empirical findings, we present a process model that illustrates how potential applicants make sense of employer brands. This dominant sensemaking journey includes three different stages: exploring the employer brand material, constructing a plausible employer image and assessing employer attractiveness. However, this trajectory is neither the only possible way nor completely linear and predictable since deviations, particularly the complete breakdown of making sense of employer brand material, are possible.

Keywords: Employer Branding; Sensemaking; Employer image; Employer attractiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41471-021-00107-7 Abstract (text/html)

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:spr:sjobre:v:73:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41471-021-00107-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/41471

DOI: 10.1007/s41471-021-00107-7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().