Recruitment is a mission-critical process for human resources management. Due to the high turnover rate and lack of specific skill requirements, the retail sector has an acute need to hire new employees to fill vacancies. Therefore, recruiting a relatively large number of new employees in a limited period of time is crucial for companies in the retail industry. Existing studies have suggested that by designing recruitment activities and utilising appropriate recruitment sources to promote and announce a job, employers are able to attract jobseekers to apply for jobs and join the organisation. The social communication theory highlights four major elements involved in any information communication: the information communicator (source), the information receiver (audience/jobseeker), the response (the receiver’s attitude towards the information received and the decision taken to apply or not) and the stimulus (the message/information content that is transmitted by the communicator). An individual’s ‘attitude’ towards the recruitment information can significantly affect their ‘intention’ of making a job application decision, and this intention can significantly influence their actual decision-making ‘behaviour’, such as accepting a job offer. Consequently, most of these studies focus on the effectiveness of the stimulus (e.g., how the design of the recruitment information content can attract more jobseekers).However, there are divergent results in the literature. For instance, numerous researchers have attempted to investigate how different recruitment information sources can impact jobseekers’ application and recruitment decisions. Some researchers claim that the formal, company-controlled, recruitment information sources, such as advertising and corporate websites, are less effective than informal. By contrast, other researchers indicate that formal sources are used and accepted more often by jobseekers because this information is regarded as considered to be more objective and reliable than the experience-based route (e.g., word-of-mouth). Some researchers suggest that employers should provide objective, hard information (confirmable information such as salary and location) and provide the message in the employer’s tone’ using company-controlled sources; thereby not to convey too much soft, experience-based information from employees. Only very limited research has considered the influences of receiver’s differences (individual differences) on the stimulus (content) and communications (source) as a moderator. The receivers’ differences could be the essential information that can be used to interpret the divergent findings in the literature. Psychologists have demonstrated that individual differences will influence personal values and will be translated into personal preferences. Decision-making research suggests that every decision-making process involves individuals’ decision habits and preferences. People tend to keep their decision habits and preferences throughout different decisions. Therefore, individual traits should be considered when seeking to understand how jobseekers evaluate information to make decisions. A well-known classification of individual differences that has been shown to affect decision-making preference is an individual’s decision-making style: maximisers (those who always try to find the best possible result and carefully evaluate all types of information from different sources) and satisficers (who aim for good-enough results and tend to save time resources). The present study aims to address the gap in the existing literature by exploring the possible reactions of different decision-making styles (maximiser vs. satisficer) in response to recruitment messages with different lengths, valences, forms and provider backgrounds that are provided from various sources. Study 1 and Study 2 are employed as groundwork studies to provide a deeper understanding of maximiser-style and satisficer-style retail-trade jobseekers’ traits. The results illustrate retail trade jobseekers’ job-information-seeking preferences and the relationship between an individual’s maximising tendency and other cognitive-based individual characteristics. The results suggest that employers should not exclude either maximiser-style or satisficer-style jobseekers because the current maximiser-style and satisficer-style employees demonstrated the same levels of job satisfaction with no particular group showed a higher or lower turnover intention. Based on the findings of Study 1 and Study 2, Chapter 5 starts with a scenario-based experiment (Study 3). This experiment assesses whether, when presented with a realistic job-information-searching scenario of receiving basic job information from a typical formal short job advertisement, maximisers and satisficers differ in their need for further information. It also explores whether further evaluation is required from informal information sources in relation to valence and tie strength. Study 3 leads to the reflection that staff ‘word-of-mouth’ (SWOM) messages were influential but could not be controlled by organisations. Study 4 expands the findings of Study 3 and tests whether employers can satisfy more maximiser-style and satisficer-style jobseekers’ information needs to encourage their perceived organisational attractiveness (OA) by providing more detailed formal job advertisement messages. The findings highlight that more details of hard information could effectively satisfy jobseekers’ information needs, even though a group of jobseekers still wanted to search for more experience-based information. However, the findings also show that more detailed messages only slightly increase maximisers’ perceived OA and do not increase satisficers’ perceived OA. By extending the findings of Study 3 and Study 4, three scenario-based experiments (Study 5.1, Study 5.2 and Study 5.3) are designed to test how employers can attract more maximiser-style and satisficer-style jobseekers by tailoring their recruitment messages. The results demonstrate that the SWOM-formed realistic job preview (RJP) messages with some negative information could best increase jobseekers’ perception of source credibility and OA. Furthermore, when maximisers and satisficers looked for different job positions they would perceive the source credibility differently if the background information of the information provider as different. A qualitative-based supplementary study (Study 6) is further conducted to delineate three issues that are not directly measured or not sufficiently clarified in the above-mentioned five studies. This complements Studies 3, 4 and 5 and theoretically enhances the understanding of how jobseekers refer to job recruitment messages and how they evaluate the job information. The results contribute to decision-making theory and social communication theory by demonstrating that the notion of maximisers and satisficers represents a significant and central individual trait in job-application information searching and decision-making in the retail trade. Furthermore, the findings suggest that an individual’s decision-making style is an influential moderator for the effectiveness of communication elements. This research also provides a fundamental basis for further studies to apply individual-differences in human resource management field.

Background. Human capital, often referred to as talent, has become a key source of competitive advantage. Due to the scarcity and competition for such talent scholars and practitioners are constantly trying to find new ways to attract, engage and retain highly soughtafter employees. The recent recession and economic slow-down has, however, led to diminished financial resources which has meant that talent management strategies have had to shift with greater focus being placed on non-financially centred offers to attract talent. Such non-financial offers include employer branding (EB) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Research Purpose. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) on employer brand and organisational attractiveness perceptions. To achieve this aim, two research objectives were set. The first objective was to establish whether statistically significant positive causal relationships exist between perceptions of CSR, employer brand and organisational attractiveness (OA). The second objective was to estimate the relative importance of CSR and employer brand amongst other typical financial and non-financial reward elements or factors, i.e. when trade-offs need to be made. Research Design and Methodological approaches. An experimental research design was utilised and primary quantitative data was collected by means of convenience, i.e. nonprobability sampling. A realised sample of n=137 was obtained. To address the objectives stated above, a two method approach was utilised. Firstly, a 22 or 2 (CSR present or not present) x 2 (employer branding present or not present) full-factorial experiment was utilised to investigate the causal relationships with organisational attractiveness (the dependant variable). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and perceived level of attractiveness measured after being exposed to one of four fictitious recruitment posters in which the CSR and employer brand were manipulated. The validity and reliability of the organisational attractiveness scale was assessed using Principle Components Analysis (PCA) and calculating Cronbach α coefficients, respectively The data were then analysed using descriptive statistics and a 22 within-subjects Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). To address the second objective, a fractional experiment was used to estimate the relative importance of CSR when randomly manipulating several typical financial and non-financial total reward factors or elements, i.e. those typically offered to prospective employees to attract them, including remuneration, benefits, work-life balance, performance and recognition, and development and career opportunities. This was done by utilising Choice-based modelling (CBM) or choice-based conjoint analysis. The Preference Lab software was used to conduct this experiment and collect the data. Part-utility worths were then calculated to assess the relative importance of each of the six attributes. Finally, the conjoint utilities were then used to identify distinct cohorts of respondents using two-step cluster analysis. Results. The results of the 22 within-subjects or full factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed statistically significant main effects, as well as statistically significant interaction effects. Moreover, the CBM revealed that, in relation to the other four attributes (i.e. renumeration, work-life balance, career development and advancement and, performance management and recognition) CSR and employer branding were ranked as the third and fifth most important attributes, respectively. When identifying distinct cohorts of respondents, using cluster analysis, a 2-cluster and a 3-cluster solution was found. Findings. It was determined that when CSR is present there is an increase in organisational attractiveness and, when a desirable employer brand is present there is an increase in organisational attractiveness. Additionally, renumeration and work-life balance were ranked as relatively more important than CSR and, renumeration, work-life balance, CSR and, career development and advancement were ranked as relatively more important than employer branding. Contribution of the study. The present study hopefully contributes to a better understanding of the role of CSR and employer branding in talent attraction and so adds to the available literature in this field of study, as well as provides further theoretical perspectives on the importance of CSR in the field of reward- and talent-management. Practically, the insights gleaned from the data could be used by organisations to inform talent attraction strategies, practices and policies which may assist in attracting highly sought-after human capital and subsequently positively impact on organisational performance and sustainable organisational success. By better understanding the positive causal effect of CSR on employer brand perceptions and desirable organisational outcomes such as organisational attractiveness, this knowledge can be used to make a compelling business case for CSR. Augmenting the argument that CSR “..is the right thing to do” on the one hand, with evidence that CSR makes good business sense, makes for a compelling win-win argument for organisations to make greater social investments with obvious benefits for communities and society at large.

Over the past decade, the use of asynchronous video interviews (AVIs) has increased exponentially, largely spurred by ongoing technological progress and shifts to remote work. Although prior research shows interview design can influence applicant reactions, the effect of video interview design factors on interviewee reactions remains unclear. The present study determines the influence of AVI stimulus format (text-based vs. audio-visual questions) on applicant perceptions of social presence, fairness and organisational attractiveness. To this end, a between-subjects posttest-only experimental design was used in two separate samples (South African sample, N = 58; USA sample, N = 169, Combined samples, N = 227). Participants were randomly assigned to either the control or experimental group. Participants completed a mock interview on a commercially available AVI platform and then answered a questionnaire measuring perceptions of social presence, fairness, and organisational attractiveness. Bootstrapped independent sample t-tests and serial mediation were used to test the hypotheses. Within Sample 1, applicant perceptions of social presence, fairness and organisational attractiveness were higher for the audio-visual and text-based AVIs, thereby supporting the proposition that audio-visual stimuli lead to higher perceptions of social presence, fairness and organisational attractiveness. Conversely, Sample 2's findings were non-significant (p > .05). While there were mixed results, the findings of this study provide preliminary evidence which suggests that within the South African context, audio-visual stimuli can be used in AVIs. Organisations in the American context should pay close attention to the effects of AVI stimulus format on applicant reactions as the findings from the American sample were not conclusive. Future research should investigate applicant reactions to different forms of AVI stimulus during a multi-stage selection process