Recruitment brand equity for unknown employers: Examining the effects of recruitment message claim verifiability and credibility on job pursuit intentions

Prior research on recruitment and employer brand equity has primarily drawn on the cognitive psychology perspective from the marketing brand equity literature to examine how recruitment practices and job seekers' perceptions of employer brand image impact recruitment outcomes. This perspective, however, provides little guidance for how unknown organizations can use recruitment messages to influence job seekers. Our study draws from research on the search-experience framework, which uses an information economics approach to brand equity, to identify how recruitment claims from companies with no employer brand image shape job seekers' job pursuit intentions. Results based on a within-subjects study with 197 participants showed that job seekers perceive differences in claim verifiability depending on the job or company attribute in the message. Further, we found that job seekers' perceptions of recruitment claim verifiability are indirectly related to intentions to pursue the recruiting organization through perceived claim credibility. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.