Unique… like everyone else: effects and mechanisms of personalization appeals in recruitment advertising
Résumé
Recruiters are faced with the challenge of replacing departing
skillsets as older workers retire. To tackle this task of attracting
new employees, recruiters often use advertising. Various employment
platforms offer the option to personalize such employment
ads by integrating individuals’ names and photographs in their
ads. This research examines recruitment ad personalization effects
on individuals’ responses under consideration of the mediating
roles of perceived considerate treatment and reactance to the
advertisement between ad personalization and organizational
attractiveness, the latter being a means to increase job-pursuit
intention and click intention. Across three between-subjects online
experiments, we show that personalized job advertisements
increase organizational attractiveness via a perception of being
treated considerately by an organization. Perceived considerate
treatment furthermore mitigates reactance effects on recipient
responses and leads to increased click and job pursuit intentions.
For some types of personalization, individuals’ sense of uniqueness
reinforces the positive effect of personalization on perceived considerate
treatment.