How Much Does a Companys Reputation Matter in Recruiting? -- Journal Article
Social reputation incorporates the degree to which the company is involved with external stakeholders and addresses sustainability issues. Using three types of reputation in a job choice study serves two purposes. First, it provides reputation with the maximum chance to have some significant effect on making a job offer more attractive to talented employees. Because we are questioning some strongly held beliefs about the role and potency of reputation in the management and HR literatures, we are careful not to mask the potential effects of reputation.
- 1 customer review?
- You're about to be redirected?
- How Much Does a Company’s Reputation Matter in Recruiting?.
- Lighter to My Cigarette.
Second, having more than one type of reputation allows us to understand better how these different reputational dimensions are used by potential and current employees to fortify their choices. For example, one or more types of reputation may be used as an initial screening feature such that a potential employer with a poor reputation may be deemed to be unsuitable regardless of what other features are offered.
In this case, we expect to find that one or more types of reputation are very important relative to all the other features of the job offer. Alternatively, reputation may play a second-order role, as a factor that helps make a particular job offer more or less attractive than an otherwise similar offer. Finally, reputation may be irrelevant. Here we would observe that across a wide range of job offers no type of reputation really matters.
As noted later, the managerial implications for job contract design across these three outcomes are very different. To control for the fact that the relative importance of job features and types of reputation may vary across different types of people and contexts of their employment, we examined multiple groups of employees.
In addition, we accounted for the issue of survey bias discussed earlier by conducting both a standard opinion survey and a detailed experiment where the study participants had to trade off job contract features. It was conducted by two business school placement services.
- Lesson Plans The Blue Hotel.
- Jens -Geschichten eines ganz normalen Jungen- (German Edition)!
- ;
- How to Poach an Employee from a Competitor | www.newyorkethnicfood.com?
- The Language of Shakespeares Plays.
- Miracles Along the Way.
- ;
- Medieval Naples An Architectural & Urban History 400–1400 (DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF NAPLES).
- Snowboard Champ?
The second study examined how 1, white-collar office workers chose among 16 comparable pairs of experimentally designed job offers. These last two studies were conducted by a market research organization. Approximately half the white-collar office workers were currently in regular employment and not looking to change jobs, while the other half were in irregular part-time work or unemployed and seeking employment opportunities. About 10 percent of those in the third study were unemployed or seeking to change jobs. In all the studies the participants answered a series of questions on their background.
They were then asked to choose among pairs of experimentally designed job offers. View Exhibit Willingness to Pay for a Good Reputation Given that our primary focus is on the reputation components of a job offer, it was important that we represent this realistically but not make it identifiable as the reason for the study in the first place. The other two studies were presented as being part of a national study on the terms and conditions of workplace agreements and job demands, and the market research firm handled all interactions with the participants.
The reputation levels we used were extensively pretested, and the certification group represented those on which local companies appeared — Reputation Institute RI for corporate reputation, Hewitt Best Employers HBE for workplace reputation, and the Global Reporting Initiative GRI for social reputation.
Such external evaluations of reputation are commonplace. These willingness-to-pay estimates are the percentage of the total value of the job offer respondents are willing to sacrifice to get the best of one feature such as a top-rated corporate reputation as against the total dollar value of the other features. By forcing people to choose a contract from each of the 16 pairs offered we could examine the degree to which each feature influenced this choice.
We found that there is considerable heterogeneity across the importance of the various job features. For all the non-MBAs considered as one group, salary, time demands and salary certainty account for View Exhibit Regarding the importance of reputation, we found that:.
What's Hot
Our research suggests that, to attract talented MBA employees, companies should focus on creating good job offers designed first and foremost around compensation and time demands. Notwithstanding the relative position of reputation, a second analysis we conducted of our data indicated that being certified by an external ratings agency can have a tie-breaking role in employee job contract choice. We found that generally, most of the impact of reputation is found at the extremes: Individuals are influenced positively by a very good reputation and negatively by a bad reputation.
However, the effects were much stronger for the corporate and workplace reputations than for social reputation. In the case of workplace reputation, the effects of certification are mixed.
How Much Does a Company’s Reputation Matter in Recruiting?
Here, simply being known locally as a good employer is often enough to induce contract choice, all other things being equal. The big exception was manual workers: From a managerial perspective a number of implications arise from our findings. First, for potential employers of MBA and EMBA students, neither a corporate reputation for social responsibility nor a reputation as a good place to work is as important as those facets of the job contract that are more directly material to their careers — salary, compensation structure, time demands and promotion opportunities.
These talented employees want to work for good employers, but their employers do not have to be leaders in corporate social responsibility. Then, and only then, differentiate the organization on reputation. Second, when we look across job categories we see a degree of heterogeneity that implies that overly simplistic prescriptions that do not account for the demands of workers in different professions could lead managers astray. Most clearly, manual workers appear to be less concerned about all three aspects of reputation, while those in the legal profession are clearly paying attention to the social and workplace dimensions of reputation.
MBAs and medical workers give more consideration to corporate reputation and much less to social reputation. When it comes to reputation and the war for talent, there is every indication it is not a case of one size fits all. For many corporations, it may make little sense to seek out a stellar reputation for corporate social responsibility with the ratings agencies just in the hope of attracting talented employees. A skeptical reader might ask if our conclusions depend on our methodology.
The answer is yes — but for a good reason. Business Owners Hiring Tool Kit. If it turns out that the candidate you've been eyeing at a competitor is as good as you hoped, and you want to begin talking with them more seriously about joining your firm, a critical step is to find out whether they have a non-compete agreement with their current employer. If they do, and they jump ship to join your firm, depending on the state in which you're based, you may be in for a great deal of trouble, including a lawsuit in some cases.
Buy for others
Some states take non-compete agreements very seriously. An employment lawyer can advise you on how best to proceed. If, after all the reference-checking, soul-searching, and risk-reward analysis, the candidate from a rival firm still looks as good as you imagined, don't forget that you need to sell them on what you and your company have to offer. After all, why should they leave their job and join you?
You need to make your opportunity sound more attractive than what they've already got. And remember, it's not just about money. Most people are motivated by things they weren't offered at their previous job: So, inspire that person to leave their job not just with a generous offer, but with everything they will be able to do and achieve at your company. Recruiters know the drill. It's always about the opportunity, the industry, or about the leadership. Finally, recognize that your competitors might be playing the same game you are. When spending the requisite time analyzing your staff and looking for gaps, don't forget that you need to treat your best employees very well, so that when they receive a call from a recruiter, or are approached by a rival CEO, the only answer they'll feel obliged to give is a firm 'Thanks, but no thanks.
You're about to be redirected We notice you're visiting us from a region where we have a local version of Inc.
Product details
Enter your email to reset your password. Or sign up using:. Sign in if you're already registered. Straight to Your Inbox. How to Poach an Employee from a Competitor. It's natural to look at a rival's staff and wonder who could help your business. Here's how to lure a star employee to work for you.