ABSTRACT
Organizations are in need of high-quality employees in order to be able to fulfil the needs of its stakeholders and to be successful. Employer branding in recruitment might be a first step to attracting high-potential employees. In this paper we conducted two separate studies. First, we analysed whether and how employer branding is currently used in recruitment practices in the Netherlands, by a content analysis of 114 job advertisements. Second, we conducted an experiment in which a job advertisement with elements of employer branding was compared to an advertisement without employer branding.
The results show that in the Netherlands, employer branding is hardly used in recruitment communication. It seems that in job advertisements rational and technical information about the job is dominant. From the experiment we learned that on various factors the advertisement with employer branding was preferred. In the discussion we will consider the findings of our study and will give managerial implications of this.
