The Role Of Construal Level And Employer Brand On College Students' Job Seeking Tendency

Employer brand is an important tool for talent attraction,retention and development.Since the employer function-symbolic framework has been identified,employer functionality or symbolic information has been more attractive to job seekers during the recruitment process,which has always been controversial.In addition to the way of presenting the employer information among the influencing factors,there are also cognitive styles of job seekers.Based on the perspective of construal level,this paper explores the preference of college job seekers for different employer brands through three behavioral experiments.Based on the perspective of construal level,in the first study,I explore the job seekers' preference for employer brand functional information and symbolic information by manipulating the time distance.In the second study,through the way of how/why paradigm,I initiate the different construal level of job seekers,the preference of college job seekers for employer brand function and symbolic information under different cognitive situations.In the third study,I explore the applicants' preference for employer brand information at different construal level by writing an employer's brand advertisement.Through analyzing the role of construal level in three experimental studies,the results show:(1)The temporal distance affects the job-seekers' job-seeking tendency,and the tendency is also affected by the temporal distance and the explorer brand type together.During the close temporal distance,the job seekers prefer the functional information of the employer brand;however,the farther the temporal distance is,the more the participants prefer the symbolic information of employer brand.(2)The construal level does not affect the job-seeking tendency of job seekers,and the employer brand type does not also affect the job-seeking tendency,the job-seeking tendency of the participants is affected by these together.When participants apply for joys,the higher the construal level is,the more the participantsprefer the symbolic information of employer brand;the lower the construal level is,the more the participants prefer the functional information of employer brand.(3)The construal level of recruitment advertisements affects the job seekers' job-seeking tendency,and employer brand types do not affect job seekers' job-seeking tendency.The interaction between employer brand and the construal level of recruitment advertisement is not significant.The lower the construal level of recruitment advertisements is,the higher the job-seeking tendency of job seekers is;and reverse is also true.