In today’s competitive labor markets, successfully recruiting a large pool of skilled and qualified job applicants is a prime concern of many organizations. In Study 1, I focused on how organizations can successfully employ four traditional recruitment practices (sponsorships, job fair activities, word-of mouth endorsements and corporate advertisements) simultaneously to disseminate information about their positive recruitment brand images to job seekers to enhance organizational attraction. The results which supported all my hypotheses indicated that, communication of an organization’s brand images to job seekers through the simultaneous use of these four traditional recruitment practices can indeed influence job seekers’ positive perceptions of an organization and result in enhanced organizational attraction. In Study 2, which was built on findings in Study1, I theorized that social media may have become a prominent source of information for job seekers. In this study, I predicted that job seekers’ use of four social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and LinkedIn) in job search will explain incremental variance in organizational attraction over the use of traditional recruitment methods. I also predicted that job seekers’ utilization of social media in job search will be positively related to organizational attraction through enhanced perceptions of instrumental and symbolic attributes. Surveys for both studies were posted on and data collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results from the second study were mixed; but the results confirm findings from prior research, which showed that the instrumental-symbolic framework can be used to predict potential job seekers’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness. Overall, results in the two studies reveal that organizations can better enhance recruitment by using a combination of social media and traditional recruitment methods to attract potential job seekers. / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

Sveriges generationsväxling på arbetsmarknaden kommer innebära nya rekryteringsbehov för samtliga arbetsplatser. Inom den offentliga sektorn lär det behövas rekrytera upp mot en halv miljon medarbetare fram till år 2020. I dagsläget råder det redan brist på medarbetare inom den offentliga sektorn och kan behöva anpassa sin employer branding strategi för att attrahera nya potentiella medarbetare. Nya potentiella medarbetare som ska inträda på arbetsmarknaden inom snar framtid är högskolestudenter. Eftersom den offentliga sektorn har begränsningar i att konkurrera genom högre löner, krävs det istället satsningar på symboliska attribut så som organisationskultur och värderingar. Syftet är undersöka utifrån högskolestudenters perspektiv hur den offentliga sektorn kan använda sig utav employer branding och dess brand attribut för att attrahera nya potentiella medarbetare. Detta uppnås genom en utförd kvalitativ studie där tio högskolestudenter intervjuas. Denna metod användes för att fånga respondenternas uppfattning och erfarenheter vad gäller den offentliga sektorn som en potentiell arbetsgivare. Studien har bidragit med att den offentliga sektorn bör utvärdera dess employer branding och de egenskaper som utlovas och om dessa verkligen hålls. Brister detta så brister även den sociala identifieringen som en gång skapade attraktion och detta skapar ett initiativ till dåliga rykten. Vidare har viktiga attribut identifierats så som värderingar, organisationskultur, arbetsförhållanden, karriärutvecklingsmöjligheter men också lön har fått en plats bland de viktigaste attributen. Högskolestudenters inställning gentemot den offentliga sektorn baseras både på egna erfarenheter och familj eller vänners erfarenheter samt sociala medier. Det blir därför viktigt att det som utlovas faktiskt hålls eftersom rykten bland en individs sociala krets/sociala medier kan påverka attraktionen av nya potentiella medarbetare. / Sweden’s generation shift in the labor market will entail new recruitment needs for all workplaces. In the public sector, it is necessary to recruit up to half a million employees by 2020. At present, there is already a shortage of employees in the public sector and may need to adapt their employer branding strategy to attract new potential employees. New potential employees who will enter the labor market in the near future are college students. Since the public sector has limitations on competing through higher wages, instead it is required to make investments in symbolic attributes such as organizational culture and values. The purpose is to examine from the perspective of college students, how the public sector can use employer branding and its brand attributes to attract new potential employees. This is achieved through a qualitative study in which ten college students are interviewed. This method was used to capture respondents’ perception and experience of the public sector as a potential employer. The study has contributed that the public sector should evaluate its employer branding and the characteristics that are promised and whether these are really kept. Failure to do so also impairs social identification that once created attraction and this creates an initiative for bad rumors. Furthermore, important attributes have been identified such as values, organizational culture, working conditions, career development, but also that salary has become among the most important attributes. College students’ attitude towards the public sector is based on both their own experiences, family or friends’ experiences and social media. It is therefore important that what is promised is actually kept because rumors among an individual’s social circle/social media can affect the attraction of new potential employees.