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Tailoring Web-Based Recruiting Messages: Individual Differences in the Persuasiveness of Affective and Cognitive Messages

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Abstract

Purpose

This study investigated how message style tailoring (e.g., matching affect/cognition-based recruitment messages to participants’ need for cognition) predicts fit perceptions and organizational pursuit preference.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Undergraduates (n = 199) interacted with four recruitment websites describing job/organizational characteristics (e.g., pay, work environment). Two messages were affect-based (e.g., cheerful recruiter providing feeling inducing information) and two were cognition-based (e.g., formal recruiter providing factual-laden information).

Findings

Affective recruitment websites elicited greater fit perceptions and were selected by 62 % of participants as their most preferred organization to pursue. Moreover, message style tailoring was generally supported such that affective messages resulted in more positive outcomes for applicants lower versus higher in need for cognition and vice versa for cognitive messages.

Implications

Understanding how affective and cognitive recruitment messages and their interaction with an individual’s need for cognition (i.e., message style tailoring) helps to advance our knowledge of how to best design recruitment websites. We provide support for the positive impact of affective recruitment messages and the added utility of message style tailoring. Such knowledge may help to enhance recruitment website effectiveness by attracting a targeted type of job applicant.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies in the recruitment domain to provide support for the effectiveness of message style tailoring on recruiting outcomes. Additionally, most studies tend to rely on one versus multiple actors or affective/cognitive scripts. Utilizing multiple scripts delivered by multiple actors was used to improve previous methodology and strengthen the causal nature of our findings.

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Notes

  1. We also asked participants to respond to adapted measures of job organization attraction (i.e., Highhouse et al. 2003), job pursuit intentions, (i.e., Smither et al. 1996), and acceptance intentions (i.e., Harris and Fink 1987). Due to the highly correlated nature of these variables with perceived fit (i.e., ≥0.80) and similar effects were found during hypothesis testing for these criterion variables, we omitted these findings from the manuscript. Complete results can be obtained from the first author.

  2. We examined two affect-related measures to test our hypotheses. Specifically, we used a measure of need for affect (NFA) (i.e., “the general motivation of people to approach or avoid situations and activities that are emotion inducing for themselves and others,” Maio and Esses 2001, p. 585) and a direct assessment of participants’ proclivities to rely on affect when reporting their attitudes about organizations. To calculate one’s proclivity for affect, we used a methodology similar to See et al. (2008), where participants responded to the following item anchored along a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “Not a Great Extent” to “To a Great Extent,” for seven organizational attitude objects: “To what extent do you think your attitudes toward (insert organization) are driven by your feelings/emotions?” We calculated a mean affect score for each participant by averaging their responses to the affect items across the seven organizations. We then used the aforementioned Judd et al. (2001) procedure to test the moderating hypotheses for P-O fit. Our results for the effects of message type on fit perceptions at high and low levels of both the affect-related measures approached, but were not statistically significant (i.e., NFA; t(197) = 1.82, p = 0.07, and direct assessment of affect; t(197) = 1.93, p = 0.06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, R3T 5V4, Canada

    David Kraichy

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Derek S. Chapman

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  1. David Kraichy
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  2. Derek S. Chapman
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Correspondence to David Kraichy.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Sample screenshots of organizational recruitment websites. An affective (top) and cognitive (bottom) website are depicted

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Appendix 2

See Table 2.

Table 2 Summary of descriptive statistics and paired sample t tests for the experimental stimuli
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Appendix 3

See Table 3.

Table 3 Summary of descriptive statistics and independent sample t tests for person–organization fit between actors within affective scripts 1 and 2
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Appendix 4

See Table 4.

Table 4 Summary of descriptive statistics and independent sample t tests for person–organization fit between actors within cognitive scripts 1 and 2
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Appendix 5

See Table 5.

Table 5 Summary of descriptive statistics and paired sample t tests for person–organization fit within affective and cognitive scripts
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Kraichy, D., Chapman, D.S. Tailoring Web-Based Recruiting Messages: Individual Differences in the Persuasiveness of Affective and Cognitive Messages. J Bus Psychol 29, 253–268 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-013-9311-z

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