Enhancing Employer Branding through corporate Innovation and Web communication

Abstract

The primary purpose of this empirical research is to show how a company's attractiveness can be influenced by its corporate innovative culture, high-quality standards attitude, and web-based communication and interaction with candidates. The research hypotheses were investigated in senior students and young graduates of Greek universities in order to propose an effective pre-recruitment employer branding strategy which causes positive effects in a company's talent pool.

The Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) software was used on a convenient sample of 737 individuals from Greek universities. Overall, the study's findings point to a company's innovative nature and orientation, which are reflected across the full range of its business activity, as a crucial factor for candidates who are interested in learning more about employment opportunities there. This is accomplished through communication media that are popular among young job seekers, such as the corporate website and social media. In this way, based on web info, candidates are able to obtain not only detailed information, but also signs with a strong symbolic effect, thus shaping positive perceptions of the company as a potential employer. Especially in a university setting, at the initial stage of candidate recruitment our results highlight the importance of the dual dimension of relevant communication, i.e. the information about jobs as presented on the corporate website and social media of the company, and the way these media communicate with job seekers.

Furthermore, the findings of our study have significant implications of how a company's HR departments should plan and organize their presence in Greek Universities in order to improve corporate positive image and attractiveness among passive and active candidates. 

Despite methodological and contextual limitations, this paper aims to enrich the pre-recruitment literature by presenting significant theoretical and managerial implications.