Examining How Corporations Use Online Job Ads to Communicate Employer Brand Image Information

Abstract

In the nascent stages of recruitment, job seekers typically have little or no information about employers beyond that communicated by recruitment materials. An investigation of the employer brand image information presented in online job advertisements was conducted using the instrumental-symbolic framework, an approach for studying the factors that influence people’s evaluations of employers. A sample of 100 job ads representing four vocations was collected from three online job boards. Study results suggest that job ads typically included 4.5 times more instrumental than symbolic information, with 13 percent of the job ads analyzed containing no symbolic attributes at all. The average reading level of online job ads and frequency of image use are also reported.