The Exploration Of Online Recruitment Advertisements From The Perspective Of Schema Theory

In this cruelly competitive society, human resources have become an importantproductive force and to some extent decide prosperity of a company. Along with the progressand popularization of Internet technology, online recruitment has become a more and morewidespread employment pattern. Online recruitment advertisements act as dominatingmedium in the process of the interaction and negotiation between employers and potentialapplicants. Domestic researches on recruitment advertisements mainly focus on genreanalysis, interpersonal meaning, content analysis, linguistic analysis, and so on, while studiesaboard of online recruitment advertisements mainly concentrate on the results ofadvertisements, specific operational approaches, the influence on applicants and racial andgender discrimination. However, there are few researches on the online recruitmentadvertisements from the aspect of Schema Theory. So in order to have an attempt to analyzethe relationship between online recruitment advertisements and Schema Theory, this papertries to explore how Schema Theory affects applicants and recruiting staff, and the schematicunderstanding of recruitment advertisement genre.Schema Theory is one of the most intellectually exciting areas of current cognitivepsychology. Based on development of cognitive linguistics and socio-linguistics, SchemaTheory gradually becomes a hot topic and receives much attention from scholars. This paperanalyzes the online recruitment advertisements from the perspective of Schema Theory.Thirty Internet job advertisements chosen from domestic well-established recruitmentwebsites are analyzed and interpreted from three aspects: linguistic schemata, contentschemata and formal schemata. This thesis aims to explain how Schema Theory helpsapplicants to understand online recruitment advertisements, helps recruiters to compile jobdescriptions and choose proper candidates, and how correctly interprets stylistic schema ofrecruitment advertisements. There are two aspects of significance the thesis intents todemonstrate: the first one is to widen practical application and explanatory domain ofSchema Theory, for the theory provides strong explanation for the forming and understanding of online recruitment advertisements, while the second one is to show a new perspective ofanalyzing online recruitment advertisements.This thesis is divided into five parts. The Introduction part deals with background,purpose, research methodology and structure of the paper. Chapter One displays the literaturereview which contains domestic and overseas study of online advertisements, and recentresearches on Schema Theory. Chapter Two is principally about theoretical framework of thispaper. Chapter Three analyzes online recruitment advertisements form three aspects:linguistic schema, content schema and formal schema. The last part is Conclusion.The conclusions of this paper include:(1) Job seekers’ stored linguistic schemata assistthem to comprehend advertisements from in language aspect. Related content schemataaccelerate the understanding of an advertisement. Applicants can set up related contentschemata, linguistic schemata and even formal schemata. In addition, during the process ofdiscourse dispose they can freely trigger these three types of schemata to comb mussydiscourses and understand whole online recruitment advertisements.(2) As for recruiters,linguistic schema and content schema function when they try to comprehend advertisements,choose proper candidates and translate job advertisements in the process of employmentactivities. Accumulating more professional terms, basic knowledge and specific work o f aposition certainly help recruiters to set up related schemata and then compile betteradvertisements and translated version.(3) The aims of online recruitment advertisements areattracting talents and publicizing corporations, and the fixed structure of this kind ofadvertisements contributes to bring about these two goals. What must be mentioned is that inorder to achieve effective communication, in the advertisements, the recruiters should try tobuild an equal power relation between applicants and recruiters.