The Mediating Role of Diversity in Recruitment
Advertising on LinkedIn
Gintare Daukantaite
11181206
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
Supervisor: Luzia Helfer 3/02/2017
Abstract
Attracting talented employees that can bring different perspectives to the organizations is critical for both small and large companies. In order to do so, companies aim to create an employer brand and engage in recruitment advertising. Recruitment advertising takes place on many platforms – magazines, recruitment agencies, brochures, company websites and social media and companies use diversity as one of the main strategies to make it effective.
Diversity is crucial in attracting heterogeneous talent and therefore is chosen to be examined in the context of LinkedIn platform. The content analysis of 400 systematically sampled LinkedIn job advertisements reveals that large companies put more emphasis on diversity in their recruitment advertising than small companies and that large companies attract more homogeneous talent than small companies. The latter relationship is partially explained by the amount of diversity as the bigger emphasis on it is related to a higher level of heterogeneity. Limitations, suggestions for the future research and practical implications are discussed.
Keywords: diversity, employer branding, recruitment advertising, LinkedIn, company size, talent attraction, number of applicants, homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants, small companies, large companies.
The Mediating Role of Diversity in Recruitment Advertising on LinkedIn Diversity is becoming a high priority for many companies. In 2015, a survey of 36,000 students was conducted by Universum (employer branding company) and they found out that 80% of students indicated that they found important that an employee “engages in creating a diverse and inclusive workplace” (Universum, 2015). Moreover, a survey by Ng & Burke (2005) concluded that women and ethnic minorities thought diversity management was vital in the process of accepting employment offers. Employer branding has been in a field for quite a long time, however, a lot of literature focuses more on internal processes of employer branding that help to retain the employees that are already employed (Clarke, 2001; Ranft & Lord, 2000; Cohen, 2006; Davis, 2015; Frank, Finnegan & Taylor, 2004; Mitchell, Holtom, Lee & Graske, 2001; Snow, 2002; Vinas, 2003) and there are not as many articles about the external communication regarding employee attraction. However, organizations, especially the large ones, in the times of a very fierce competition, are also in need of finding ways to attract new talented and creative people. The benefits of diverse employees suggest such organizational consequences as increased organizational commitment, increased workgroup dynamics and innovation, saving costs by increasing the growth of business (Timmermans & Kristinsson, 2011; Robinson & Dechant, 1997). For these reasons both small-sized and large companies engage in recruitment advertising. Despite of the well-known common advantages of recruitment advertising such as influencing the company’s image and reputation (Ryan, Gubern & Rodriguez, 2000; Gatewood, Gowan & Lautenschlager, 1993), the existing
differences in the usage of recruitment advertising strategies, such as emphasizing diversity in small and large companies require a more thorough exploration and are crucial for attracting talented employees.
Even though the existing academic literature has been already examining the links between company size and diversity (Janssens & Zanoni, 2014; Richard et. al, 2013;
Cohen &Klepper, 1992) and diversity and talent attraction (Glen, 2007; Ng&Burke, 2005; Powell, 1984), it still offers a limited understanding about the combination of these elements in employer branding on social media networks and LinkedIn, in particular. With the rise of professional social media networks and recruitment advertising relocating to online spaces (Parry & Wilson, 2009), it is important to analyze how diversity is being expressed in online recruitment advertising by small and large companies and whether it is effective in attracting more talented and diverse people that can benefit the company. In order to provide a better understanding of this area in the field of employer branding and communication and enrich the field with the new insights about recruitment advertising on LinkedIn, the following research question was formulated:
Research Question: To what extent is diversity communicated in recruitment advertising of small and large companies on LinkedIn and how does it affect their talent attraction?
The sequential sections of this study will provide a literature review on the topics of employer branding, recruitment advertising and talent attraction, describe the results of the analysis, draw conclusions and implications for the scholars and practitioners.
Literature review
Defining employer branding and recruitment advertising
The term that encompasses most of the aspects of this study is employer
branding. Employer brand can be defined as “employer’s possession of an attractive employer image” (Figurska&Matuska, 2013). This attractive image can serve many purposes, including “helping organizations compete effectively in the labor market and drive employee loyalty through effective recruitment, engagement and retention practices” (Sokro, 2012). The process of creating and maintaining a positive employer brand is called employer branding.
It refers to actions of the company (or the employer) that seek to attract talented applicants to become employees of the company, recruiting these employees, engaging them in active participation of company’s life, creating loyalty and retaining the employees. In this study, the external efforts of creating an employer brand will be investigated, including knowledge from both human resources, marketing and strategic communication perspectives.
Recruitment advertising is one of the external tools for the employer branding. Hemphill and Kulik (2014) define recruitment advertising as “the first point of contact between a job applicant and organization”. Rafaeli and Oliver (1998) claim that employment advertisements can be considered as a space of self-presentation for organizations and also as a space to share the information about a job from the perspective of an employer. Recruitment advertising can also be placed on various platforms such as job boards, company‘s buildings, websites of organizations, recruitment websites or social media.
Employer branding and recruitment advertising can also be considered as means of building organizational attractiveness (Berthon, Ewing & Hah, 2005). Therefore, the following section will describe one of the dimensions that is quite commonly mentioned as an attractive feature of an employing organization – diversity (Albinger & Freeman, 2000; Williams & Bauer, 1994; Thomas & Wise, 1999).
Diversity dimensions
Diversity is a broad concept, encompassing different states of being diverse and different dimensions. Green et al. (2002) define diversity as “acknowledging, understanding, accepting, and valuing differences among people with respect to age, class, race, ethnicity, gender, education, disabilities, etc“. The place where diversity becomes apparent is quite often a workplace where these differences of people can be clearly visible and have both positive and negative effects on organization‘s activities, depending on the way these
differences are acknowledged and accepted. On one hand, diversity can cause workplace conflicts or misunderstandings which result in poor work quality and atmosphere and even have such consequences as absenteeism (Basset-Jones, 2005). On the other hand, many authors suggest that diversity is a source of creativity and innovation because different
perspectives help in creating new products and generating new ideas (Lee, 2000). The critical opportunity when the company can increase their diversity in a workplace is recruitment and therefore, companies that seek to attract diverse employees, explicitly and in an implicit way try to express their attitude towards diversity in job advertisements (Avery & McKay, 2006).
Mazur (2010) distinguishes between three types of diversity dimensions: primary dimensions (race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability), secondary dimensions ( religion, culture, sexual orientation, work experience, language, education, etc.), and tertiary
dimensions (beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, etc.). However, this research will be focused on only several of diversity dimensions that are the most relevant for the study: language, ethnicity/race, gender, age, disability, work experience and education. According to Mazur (2010), even though there are endless definitions of diversity, the visible qualities such as ethnicity, gender, age and disability are the basis of most of the legislation and have the biggest impact. Language is the most obvious diversity dimension, since it is clearly visible and therefore can have a big impact on organization’s activities. Ethnicity was found to
significantly moderate group dynamics at work and gender also has an effect to it (Khan et al., 2010). Therefore, if companies are seeking to make their workgroups dynamic, they would emphasize ethnical and gender differences in their job advertisements. Age and disability usually can be seen as the factors, adding up to the external employer image that companies want to create. Boehm & Dwertmann (2015) argue that “age and disability diversity are two particularly important but understudied dimensions of diversity in the workplace“ (p. 42). Therefore, it is interesting to examine the effects of these two dimensions and discover
whether they have an impact on talent attraction. Moreover, two of the secondary diversity dimensions – work experience and education are also included in this research due to the nature of the object of the study – job advertisements. Cunningham & Sagas (2004) suggest that less obvious diversity dimensions such as experience in a work role can help to establish similarity amongst colleagues. This, in turn, fosters better working relationships and could affect the attractiveness of organization for applicants, the authors speculate.
Workplace diversity can be considered as an asset, resulting from successful recruitment advertising. However, the characteristics of an organization also define its needs for diverse job applicants and prospective employees. One of these characteristics is
company size which will be presented in the section below.
The role of diversity in small and large companies
In the publication, released by the European Commission, small companies are defined as “enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million“. (EU, 2003, p. 39). Companies that employ more than 250 persons and which do not meet the set amount of turnover and annual balance sheet criteria are considered to be “large companies“. Company‘s size is thought to be one of the factors that influence its need for diverse employees.
Large companies usually are international and operate through different countries or even continents, have employees with differing cultural, ethnical and religious backgrounds. This makes it important to be aware of these differences and apply certain tools to deal with them in a professional way. Beaver and Hutchings (2005) claim that the reason behind a lot of attention which is dedicated to diversity in large companies is simply enough resources to employ HR specialists who are professionally trained and educated to implement
strategies of attracting targeted applicants. O’Connor and DeMartino (2006) claim that in order “to escape the intense competition of today’s global economy, large established organizations seek growth options beyond conventional new product development“ (p.475). In order to do so, they need to allocate resources in a way that brings in innovation. A study by Østergaard, Timmermans & Kristinsson (2011) proved that there is a positive relation between such diversity dimensions as education and gender on introducing innovation, and that the organizational culture that is open to diversity is positively related to innovations. Therefore, large companies dedicate their attention to diversity as a possible source of talented diverse employees that can help organizations to boost their innovativeness and ascertain the stable amount of growth.
Small companies, on the other hand, often struggle to attract new diverse employees. Deshpan and Golhar (1994) claim that “motivating, and retaining employees is one of the biggest problems for small firms” (p.49). They argue that small companies are more likely to focus their attention on the areas such as finance or marketing instead of paying more attention to HRM practices such as fostering diversity. Small companies usually rely on the recruiting methods such as word-of-mouth recruitment and recommendations from the existing staff members and do not have highly formalized procedures that are used to attract new employees (Carroll, Marchington & Earnshaw, 1999). Using such methods is likely to lead to attracting more similar employees because employment recommendations are closely linked to perceived similarity (Garcia, Posthuma & Colella, 2008). This means that the more similar candidates are to employees, the more likely they are to recommend them as fit for a certain position. With the word-of-mouth recruitment in small companies, therefore, diversity may not be emphasized as much as in large companies that have enough resources to conduct a thorough research about their candidates.
These assumptions, theoretical insights and empirical research on small and large companies and their approach to diversity lead to the following hypothesis:
H1: Diversity is more emphasized in job advertisements of large companies than in small companies.
Linking diversity and talent attraction: number of applicants
Nowadays, the competitiveness of markets requires employers to put a lot of efforts into trying to attract skilled and knowledgeable employees. It is widely assumed that in the coming decades, recruiting applicants can become more and more difficult since the number of businesses is growing rapidly and the need for talent is expanding (Chapman et. al, 2005). If organizations are not able to attract talented employees, it limits their abilities to grow economically and maintain sustainability (Botha et al., 2011). Even though the demand for talented employees is high, the supply is limited to a certain group of people – the ones who are of the certain working age and the ones who are qualified.
Various authors distinguish between the strategies of how to attract talent. Glen (2007) offers diversity management as one of the strategies. He claims that “diversity management is an essential strategy for ensuring a strengthened internal talent pool” (Glen, 2007, p. 3). Even though he considers diversity management as a great opportunity for maintaining talented people in the company, it can be assumed that the same strategy also is possibly applicable to recruitment advertising as well. Previous studies have gathered empirical data that proves that diversity management is also related to the intentions of applicants to seek employment (Ng&Burke, 2005). The advertised diversity resulted in the growing numbers of female applicants and minority members (Cox& Blake, 1991) and the increasing numbers of Black applicants (Avery, 2003). It has been also proved that the way applicants perceive such organization’s attributes as compensation, training or diversity
policies is positively related to applicant attraction and organizational attractiveness (Powell, 1984). These perceptions, in turn, increases the incentives to apply for jobs in the
organizations and results in more applicants on the job openings. Bearing these considerations in mind, the second hypothesis can be formulated in the following way:
H2: Higher emphasis on diversity in recruitment advertising is positively related to the number of applicants.
Linking diversity and talent attraction: homogeneity/ heterogeneity of applicants In talent attraction, two different kinds of approaches exist: some companies seek to emphasize diversity and attract applicants that are as heterogeneous as possible (“value-in-diversity” perspective) and the ones who seek to attract more homogeneous applicants (Van Knippenberg, De Dreu & Homan, 2004). Companies are the most likely to do so when they take into consideration the composition of their work teams and when they believe that having homogeneous or heterogeneous teams will be beneficial for productivity. If organizations seek to form homogeneous teams, then they will focus on employing people with similarities, and if organizations seek to form heterogeneous teams, they are more likely to focus on differences.
Homogeneous teams are defined as teams that are made up of people that come from similar backgrounds and this can serve as an advantage. For instance, a more pleasant atmosphere in work teams was reported and fewer problems regarding communication were uncovered in the teams that were homogeneous than in those that were heterogeneous (Fielder, 1966 in Earley & Mosakowski, 2000). Effective communication in teamwork is almost crucial, therefore it can be claimed that homogeneous teams are able to work efficiently as one unit.
On the other hand, teams in the workplace that consist of members with varying backgrounds, also have their own advantages. Some authors agree that heterogeneity in groups is very closely related to problem-solving creativity that is fostered by conflicts (Nemeth & Wachter, 1983; Slaughter, Sinar & Bachiochi, 2002). The role of conflict in heterogeneous teams and innovation is also mentioned in a study by Van Knippenberg, De Dreu & Homan (2004). The authors explain that there is a relationship between a diversity of a team and task-related conflicts which lead to innovation and better results of performance (Jehn et al., 1999 in Van Knippenberg, De Dreu & Homan, 2004).
One of the ways how to attract those heterogeneous applicants can be considered emphasizing diversity in recruitment advertising. Using “Value-in-Diversity” perspective leads to reflecting it in an employer brand (Hess, 2007). Avery et. al (2006) claim that the level of success in attracting female and minority applicants depend on a level in which they express their value in diversity on their job advertisements. For example, Konrad and
Linnehan (1995) found that all the communication by human resources team which took demographic status into account was positively related to the increasing percentage of minority employees. Moreover, seeing minorities pictured visually in a job advertisement increases the attractiveness of a company for Black and Latino groups (Avery, Hernandez & Hebl, 2004) and there is a significant relationship between affirmative action plans (ensuring non-discriminatory policies), communicated in job advertisements and job pursuit intentions of minority employees (Slaughter, Sinar & Bachiochi, 2002).
These results of emphasizing diversity in job advertisements can be related to impression management and it can be claimed that for minority members or people from different contexts, recruitment advertising, portraying homogeneous characteristics of the company cannot be relatable and therefore, becomes less attractive. As a result of these considerations, the third hypothesis has been formulated:
H3: Emphasizing diversity in recruitment advertising attracts more heterogeneous applicants.
The mediating effect of diversity on company size and talent attraction
Company size and talent attraction are associated in several ways. Usually, the larger company is the more attention from applicants it receives. Turban and Keon (1993) found that organization‘s size is positively related to its attractiveness, which, in turn, results in a bigger amount of people who are interested in applying for the open job positions (in Turban & Greening, 1997). Larger companies usually have a better financial performance which leads to increased reputation (Brown & Perry, 1994). Job seekers tend to make
associations between the reputation of the company, and the social status of their own lives, if they would choose to work for these certain companies. With the goal to improve their self-esteem, they are more likely to find organizations that have good reputations, more attractive to work in (Williams et. al, 2010). Large companies are able to create good reputations and therefore, to attract more talent (Vergin & Qoronfleh, 1998).
On the other hand, company size and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants might be also associated. Baron, Black & Loewenstein (1987) argue that large companies have more resources than small companies and therefore they conduct a more thorough screening of applicants before choosing the right candidate. This implies that large companies have more choices and more freedom to decide whether they want to attract homogeneous, or heterogeneous applicants. However, even though large organizations are in need of diverse applicants, traditionally large organizations were used to attract more homogeneous applicants because they were more oriented towards scale and efficiency (Reeves & Deimler, 2011). The authors also argue that “their (large companies‘) hierarchical structures and fixed routines lack the diversity and flexibility needed for rapid learning and change“ (p. 141). Large companies are changing quite slowly and therefore, still, attract more homogeneous applicants. Small
companies, on the other hand, may seek to attract as heterogeneous applicants as possible because learning, changes and adaptability are crucial for their survival (Thürer et. al, 2013).
Nevertheless, the relationship between company size and talent attraction can be assumed to be mediated by diversity. If the company is small but emphasizes diversity in their recruitment advertising, then it is likely that the number of applicants is growing and they are more heterogeneous than in a large company where diversity is not emphasized. The
relationship between the company size and talent attraction might be explained through diversity. Therefore, the following hypotheses are formulated:
H4: Diversity amount in recruitment advertising positively mediates the relationship between company size and a number of applicants.
H5: Diversity amount in recruitment advertising positively mediates the relationship between company size and the heterogeneity of applicants.
The theoretical model of expectations is illustrated by figure 1.
Figure 1. Theoretical Model
Method
In order to test the formulated hypotheses, the analysis was conducted following the methods described below.
Materials
The chosen empirical research method is a content analysis of LinkedIn job advertisements. LinkedIn is a social network that connects professionals all over the world and it also provides a platform where recruitment advertising takes place through building and maintaining networks, advertising the job openings and applying to jobs (Van Dijck, 2013).
The unit of the analysis is a single job advertisement with the unlimited time frame until the required volume of job advertisements is collected (400 job advertisements, 40 hours of coding). To analyze these job advertisements, certain materials (described below) were used.
Observed variables
For the content analysis, a codebook was created with the specific coding guidelines and the examples of coding possibilities (see Appendix B).
The first part of the content analysis was dedicated to the operationalized dimensions of diversity: language, ethnicity/race, gender, age, disability, work experience and education.
Language category includes every expression of preferred language(s). The keywords for this category were not defined in advance because of a large possible variety, including 6.909 languages (Anderson, 2010). Therefore, this category was more latent for coders and included their own perceptions of language.
The category “Ethnicity/race“ consists of expressions of ethnicity, nationality, race or color. Moreover, it also includes locality – for example, such keywords local, regional, global, multicultural, national or international would be considered as a category
Gender dimension refers to all they keywords in a job advertisement that are related to sex and gender. It can be expressed directly as a form of nouns – for example, a man/ a woman, or also in the form of such adjectives that are related with gender – male/female.
Age category can be defined as a category that includes all the clues in a job advertisement that are related to the age, aging, or youth. The exact year categories expressed in numbers (for example, 30-56 years old) and the latent descriptions of age (for example – young/ senior) are both considered acceptable for this category.
Disability dimension refers to all the mentions in a job advertisement about any kind of physical or mental disabilities, special assistance or special job opportunities for disabled people. Moreover, any mentions of a certain disease are also considered fitting into this category.
Work Experience category consists of any mentions about experience, skills or abilities that have a practical and applied meaning. This category most often is related to the job requirements.
Education category is consisting of keywords that refer to the theoretical knowledge and education level. It includes all types of education institutions that are
mentioned (such as school, college, university, etc.), all kinds of education acquired (such as Bachelor‘s degree, Master‘s degree, etc.) and all kinds of required knowledge for a specific job role (such as IT knowledge, knowledge about construction tools, etc.).
The keywords for each dimension of diversity were determined and they were looked for in job advertisements. One keyword counts as one point and the amount of points in one job advertisement is written to a cell. Moreover, three most often used keywords of each dimension is written in cells as text to give the research more qualitative insights as well.
The second part of the content analysis was dedicated to determining the demographic characteristics of the applicants of the investigated job advertisement. This part of the content analysis was filled in using data and insights which are provided by LinkedIn:
a) Number of applicants refers to the exact amount of people who applied for this job position through Linkedin;
b) Homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants is determined by three items: nationalities, seniority levels, education levels of applicants. Each of these three items has two types of information. In the first cell, the amount of different nationalities, seniority levels and education levels was written. In the second cell, the exact names of nationalities, seniority levels and education levels were written. For example, if there were Polish, American and Greek applicants for one of the job advertisements, the first cell would be filled with the number 3 and the second cell would be filled with ‘Polish‘, ‚American‘, ‚Greek‘.
The third part of content analysis consists of several items that reveal more about company‘s attitude towards diversity.
Equal opportunity statement – refers to the existing equal opportunity statements in the job advertisements. There are only two possible options to a question whether equal opportunity statements are included in a job advertisement: ‘yes‘ or ‘no‘. Moreover, if equal opportunity statement is included in a job advertisement, it also has to be copied and pasted in a coding sheet.
Diversity attitude is defined as the attitude a company applies towards diversity. There are three possible options: ‘colorblind‘, ‘multicultural‘ or ‘neutral‘. If the job
advertisement states that the company treats everyone equally without regards to their
differences and focuses on individual qualities, then diversity attitude is colorblind. If the job advertisement states that the company embraces diversity and treats everyone accordingly to
their special needs, then diversity attitude is multicultural. If the job advertisement does not mention any of the above, then the diversity attitude is considered as neutral.
Measures
In order to test the hypothesis, two scales have been created and used. The first scale represents the amount of diversity. Items that the scale consists of include diversity dimensions: language, ethnicity/race, gender, age, disability, experience and education. The reliability of this scale is relatively weak, Cronbach‘s alpha = .43. Conducting a factor analysis revealed that eliminating one or several variables would have even worse effects on the reliability of the scale. This score of Cronbach‘s alpha indicates that the scale is not uni-dimensional, however, the subject – diversity amount is conceptually widely spread as well and each dimension of diversity measures different subjects. Based on some authors
suggesting that Cronbach‘s alpha is not always the critical element in using a scale (Hair et. al, 2014; Sijtsma, 2009; Green & Yang, 2009), it was decided to carry on with using this scale for the amount of diversity (implications of this are discussed in “Limitations and future research“ section).
The second scale represents homogeneity/heterogeneity variable of the theoretical model. Initially, the scale had to be consisting of three main items: locations of applicants, the differences of education levels and the differences of seniority levels. After conducting a principal component analysis (PCA), the variable „locations of applicants“ showed insignificant correlations, p(seniority levels) = .713, p(education levels) = .149, and therefore was eliminated from the scale. PCA of 2 chosen items „differences of education levels“ and „differences of seniority levels“ forms a uni-dimensional scale with none of the components that has an eigenvalue which is above 1 (Eigenvalue = 1.67). Correlations are significant, p = .000, and both components correlate positively. The scale is reasonably reliable, Cronbach‘s
alpha = .77 and it measures how homogenous or heterogenous applicants are. The higher scores mean the bigger differences in the education and seniority levels of applicants. Therefore, high scores on this scale indicate heterogeneity and low scores indicate homogeneity.
Procedures
Selection of research units
The job advertisements were selected using the advanced search function on Linkedin. Firstly, the size of the companies that post job advertisements was determined in order to make a comparison of diversity emphasizing in differently-sized companies. Two searches were conducted: one for the small-sized companies, another one for the large companies. Secondly, stratified sampling was employed to determine which job
advertisements were chosen for the analysis. The search of small-sized companies returned 23446 companies in total, whereas the search for large companies returned 13078 results. With the proportional number of 1.79, it was decided to analyze the latest job advertisements from each 2nd small company and the latest job advertisements from each 1st large company. All chosen content was copied to a PDF file for availability in case they would become unavailable on LinkedIn platform.
Inter-coder reliability
For making sure that the data collection is consistent and reliable, inter-coder reliability has to be established. In this case, the inter-coder reliability was checked with the assistance of one additional coder who examined 10% of the data sample of diversity dimensions. Only diversity dimensions were chosen because the data about applicants was provided by LinkedIn and therefore was not dependent on a coder. In total there were 80 advertisements that were used to calculate the inter-coder reliability. In order to do that, an
online tool ReCal2 0.1 for calculating Krippendorff‘s Alpha‘s was used
(http://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront). The results of this test are presented in a table (see Appendix C). All of the variables that were examined had a high Krippendorff‘s alpha with the highest score of 1 (age dimension) and the lowest score of .83 (language dimension).
Results
In the content analysis conducted, diversity in recruitment advertising of small and large companies on Linkedin was examined in relationship to a number of applicants and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants. In a total amount of job advertisements collected (N = 400), there was a proportionally (according to a sampling method) bigger amount of small companies (n = 224) and a smaller amount of large companies (n = 176). All the companies were based in the countries that belong to the EU, however, job locations were various, including countries from all other continents. Equal opportunity statements (EOS) were found in approximately one out of ten job advertisements (n = 41) and most of the advertisements were composed using neutral diversity perspective (n = 295). They keywords that were the most often used in each of the dimensions of diversity are presented in appendix A.
The first formulated prediction was that diversity is more emphasized in job advertisements of large companies than in small companies. For testing this hypothesis, a regression model was used with the “amount of diversity” as a dependent variable and
“company size” as an independent variable and this model was significant, F(1, 398) = 42.13, p = .000. The prediction of amount of diversity based on a company size is just between very weak and weak - company size only predicts 10% of amount of diversity, found in job advertisements (R2 = .10). Company size, b* = 0.31, t = 6.49, p = .000 has a significant, moderately strong association with amount of diversity. This means that when companies are large, amount of diversity is 6.23 higher than when the companies are small and therefore, the
first hypothesis can be accepted. To find out which diversity dimensions had the most influence on this result and had the strongest impact on the differences between large and small companies, a one-way ANOVA was conducted. The descriptive mean scores of how many times each diversity dimension was mentioned in small and large companies are presented in Table 1. The ANOVA also revealed that there were significant differences in large and small companies regarding such diversity dimensions as ethnicity/race, gender, disability, work experience and education, pethnicity/race, gender, disability, education = .000, pexperience =
.003. However, differences of age and language dimensions, based on company size, were not significant, page = .74, planguage = .06.
Table 1
Means and standard deviations of the diversity dimensions in comparison: small vs. large companies
Small companies Large companies
M SD M SD Language 0.54 1.13 0.76 1.16 Ethnicity/race 1.32 2.28 2.43 3.22 Gender 0.11 0.44 0.51 1.24 Age 1.26 1.58 1.20 2.03 Disability 0.02 0.13 0.20 0.60 Experience 5.43 4.19 6.80 4.93 Education 2.41 2.84 5.43 7.18
This indicates that the first hypothesis can be accepted - diversity is significantly more emphasized in large companies and especially regarding ethnicity/race, gender, disability, work experience and education.
The second expectation of this study was that higher emphasis on diversity in recruitment advertising is positively related to the number of applicants. A regression model with amount of diversity as an independent variable and number of applicants as a dependent variable was used to test this hypothesis. After conducting a linear regression, the model was found to be insignificant F(1, 398) = .09, p = .765 and the hypothesis was rejected. A factorial ANOVA was also conducted to test the main effects of language, ethnicity/race, gender, age, work experience and education on the number of applicants. Four effects were statistically insignificant, planguage = .399, pgender = .799, pwork_experience = .271, peducation = .223. However, the effects of ethnicity/race, age and disability were significant, Fethnicity/race (0,19) = 3.03, pethnicity/race = .000, Fage (0,19) = 2.37, page = .021, Fdisability (0,3) = 2.77, pdisability = .044.
This means that even though the model in total is insignificant, there are several dimensions of diversity (ethnicity/race, age and disability) that have an effect on the number of applicants. The sizes of main effects and significance scores of tested variables are given in a Table 2 below. The biggest significant effect on number of applicants can be found in ethnicity/race dimension, Fethnicity/race (0,19) = 3.03, pethnicity/race = .000, and age has the smallest significant
effect on the number of applicants, Fage (0,19) = 2.37, page = .021.
Table 2
The sizes and significance scores of the main diversity dimensions‘effects on the number of applicants
F p
Ethnicity/Race 3.03 .000 Gender .55 .799 Age 2.37 .021 Disability 2.77 .044 Work experience 1.19 .271 Education 1.00 .461
The third hypothesis predicted that emphasizing diversity in recruitment advertising attracts more heterogeneous applicants. In order to test this hypothesis, a regression model with amount of diversity as an independent variable and
homogeneity/heterogeneity as a dependent variable was used. The regression model is insignificant F(1, 398) = 2.98, p = .085 and therefore, the third hypothesis is rejected, too. In order to test the main effects of diversity dimensions and diversity attitude on
homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants, a factorial ANOVA was conducted with seven diversity dimensions and diversity attitude as independent variables and
homogeneity/heterogeneity as a dependent variable. All main effects and interaction effects were insignificant, indicating that there are no significant effects of diversity dimensions on how homogeneous or heterogeneous the applicants are.
The fourth prediction was formulated as an expectation that diversity amount in recruitment advertising mediates the relationship between company size and a number of applicants. PROCESS macro command was used to investigate this hypothesis about the mediation effect between company size, amount of diversity and number of applicants. Results indicated that company size significantly predicts amount of diversity, b = 6.23, SE = .96, p = .000. However, amount of diversity does not significantly predict a number of
insignificant, p = .636. As a result of this, the total effect of a tested mediation model was insignificant too, p = .588, and it can be claimed that amount of diversity does not mediate the relationship between company size and a number of applicants and the hypothesis, therefore, is rejected.
The fifth hypothesis predicted that diversity amount in recruitment advertising mediates the relationship between company size and homogeneity/heterogeneity of
applicants. PROCESS macro command was used to test the hypothesis claiming that amount of diversity mediates the relationship between company size and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants. Exactly as in the previous hypotheses, company size significantly predicts amount of diversity, b = 6.23, SE = .96, p = .000. The effect of amount of diversity on homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants is found to be insignificant, p = .085, but the prediction of homogeneity/heterogeneity based on company size is significant, b = -.04, SE = .01, p = .004. After conducting a multiple regression, controlling for amount of diversity, this effect changed by .004, b = -.36 which suggests that there is a partial mediation. However, Sobel‘s Z test indicates that the value of this mediation is insignificant (b = - 04, p = .004, b‘ = -.036, p = .013, Sobel‘s Z = -.99, p = .323). Even though partial mediation was found, its value is insignificant which means that the hypothesis is rejected.
Figure 2. Results of the mediation model between company size, amount of diversity and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants
Discussion
The results of the study reveal some findings that are unexpected and some of the findings that are strongly confirmed and supported by data: diversity is expressed more in large companies than in small companies, however, large companies attract more
homogeneous applicants than small companies do. The expectations that higher emphasis on diversity in recruitment advertising is positively related to the number of applicants and heterogeneous applicants are not supported and the predictions that amount of diversity mediates the relationship between company size and the number of applicants and that amount of diversity mediates the relationship between company size and
homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants are also insignificant.
The capability and incentives of large companies to emphasize diversity in their recruitment advertising more then in job advertisements by small companies fully match with the academic literature, discussed in the literature review of this study (Beaver & Hutchings, 2005; O’Connor & DeMartino, 2006). It supports the idea that large companies are more capable of focusing on diversity in their companies, or in some cases, because of more financial resources they are more motivated to do so. Even though these incentives show that the large companies value diversity, they still attract applicants who are more homogeneous rather than heterogeneous. This finding matches with the theoretical insights of Reeves and Deimler (2011) who claim that large companies are still quite slow and keep the traditional structures of organization which, in turn, attracts more homogeneous applicants. These two significant findings indicate that even though large companies make efforts to build an
attractive employer brand for diverse employees, in many cases it is still not effective, and with the assistance of future research that could be targeted towards diversity in large
companies, other factors influencing the organizations’s attractiveness for diverse employees could be determined.
The findings about the number of applicants and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants based on amount of diversity in recruitment advertising clash with the academic insights discussed above claiming that diversity and diversity management are the strategies that lead to organizational attractiveness and increasing number of prospective employees (Glen, 2007; Ng&Burke, 2005; Cox & Blake, 1991; Avery, 2003) and more heterogeneous applicants (Avery et. Al, 2006; Konrad & Linnehan 1995; Avery, Hernandez & Hebl, 2004; Slaughter, Sinar & Bachiochi, 2002). Authors agree that diversity is vital, however, there might be other factors that are even more significant in attracting new employees. Sivertzen, Nilsen and Olafsen (2013) suggest that “ innovation value, psychological value, application value, and the use of social media positively relate to corporate reputation, which in turn is positively linked to intentions to apply for a job” (p. 473). Moreover, according to Gomes and Neves (2011), prospective applicants’ intentions to apply can be determined by advertising and emphasize certain job characteristics and organizational attributes such as task diversity, task identity, career perspectives, work environment, stability and job security. In addition to this, even though the discussed literature suggests that emphasizing diversity in recruitment advertising attracts more applicants that are from different minority groups and have more demographic differences, very often their findings also suggest that diversity in job
advertisements has no effect or even a positive effect on majority members too. For example, the study by Perkins, Thomas, and Taylor (2000) suggests that diversity in job advertisements might be helpful for recruiting minority job applicants but have no effect on majority
to attract more minority members, but also have a steady rate of attracting majority members. The same findings can be even reinforced by Avery, Hernandez and Hebl (2004) because they also claim that minorities tend to react to the diversity clues in job advertisements whereas they have no effect on White applicants. Even though diversity would be emphasized in a job advertisement, but the organization already has an established interest of majority members because of some other qualities or characteristics of a company, then there is simply no effect of diversity on heterogeneity of applicants.
The results of two mediation models are also contradictory to the academic insights. However, in the first mediation model between company size, amount of diversity and number of applicants two predictions matched the results: large companies emphasize diversity more than small companies and there is no significant direct relationship between company size and a number of applicants (large companies do not necessarily attract more applicants). The latter was also predicted by Hiltrop (1999) who presents the results of a survey about the choice of employers. It reveals that large companies might not be the ones to attract the most applicants because only 10 of 1000 adults said that they would choose to work for a big company instead of small or a medium-sized company. In addition to that, most authors agree that talent attraction does not primarily depend on the way organization is or what the company size is, but on the strategies that an organization employs to attract talent (Horwitz et. al, 2003; Beechler & Woodward, 2009; Guthridge, Komm & Lawson, 2008). The third relationship in the mediation model, expecting that amount of diversity has an effect on the number of applicants was insignificant. Even though the last hypothesis about the second mediation model was rejected, it indicates the partial mediation between company size and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants based on the amount of diversity. This proves that diversity alone might not be the only predictor of how homogeneous or heterogeneous the applicants are, but it has a potential, in combination with other elements such as financial
factors or benefits for employees to improve the organizational attractiveness for more heterogeneous applicants too.
Limitations and future research
Most of the limitations might be associated with the usage of LinkedIn as a source for content analysis and reliability of the scales, used for amount of diversity and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants.
Firstly, LinkedIn provides a limited amount of data about the applicant
locations, seniority and education levels with the minimum of one and a maximum of three to four options on each question. For the future exploration of LinkedIn, coders should be able to have access to an “Executive” account which allows seeing such insights as company growth trends, functional trends or leadership changes in organizations. Moreover, in order to make it more detailed, an automated content analysis could be applied to LinkedIn to gather all the possible data about the job advertisements and applicants to create word clusters that would give even more insight into the content of job advertisements.
Scale – forming was also a complicated process as there are not so many scales formed that fit content analysis method in recruitment advertising and therefore, composite and self-made scales are less reliable, especially the scale for amount of diversity (Cronbach‘s Alpha = .43). Diversity scales are quite problematic because of their complexity and variety of items, however, they were chosen as applicable in this context of Linkedin. Pre-testing different diversity scales could be a solution to this problem that would allow avoiding low-reliability scores for formed scales.
The mediating and moderating effects of diversity in combination with other characteristics of organization that is emphasized in recruitment advertising could be an interesting topic for the future research. Very often diversity is likely to affect talent
attraction, but it is not the only factor that influences it. For example, diversity as a mediator could be combined with such measures as person-organization fit, organizational
attractiveness, company’s reputation or the involvement in CSR activities and it would give more insights about the features that should be emphasized in job advertisements in order to attract more and heterogeneous applicants. It could also be broadened with post-surveys or experiments in organizations, after hiring the new applicants. For example, expressed diversity attitude in the job advertisements could be compared with the perceived diversity attitude by employees who have been hired by the companies, or the heterogeneity of hired applicants and diversity expressions in recruitment advertising could serve as variables in the studies of innovation in small and large companies. In this way, the consistency of creating and maintaining the promise of employer brand could be explored even further and have important practical implications for employers.
Practical implications
Regardless of the academic meaning, this study also has practical implications for both small and large companies. Firstly, it gives guidance for HR and communication professionals on how to use social media and recruitment advertising in order to attract talented people who would be greatly beneficial for the organizations and encourages to consider the advantages and disadvantages of choosing diversity as a strategy. Secondly, the amount of applicants that apply for positions through LinkedIn also proves that it might be considered as one of the tools for creating a targeted employer brand. Lastly, no significant relationship between diversity and number of applicants also could mean that practitioners still need to broaden their search for the key features in job advertisements that can help to attract more employees.
Conclusion
The research question which was formulated to ask to what extent diversity is communicated in recruitment advertising of small-sized and large companies on LinkedIn and how it affects their talent attraction could be answered in the following way: diversity is expressed more in large than in small companies, however amount of expressed diversity does not have a significant effect on talent attraction. Diversity plays only a partial role in the relationship between company size and talent attraction. There is enough evidence to support the idea that large companies put more emphasis on diversity in recruitment advertising than small companies do and that diversity partially mediates the relationship between company size and homogeneity/heterogeneity of applicants. This shows the importance of diversity for successful recruitment, however, diversity as a single feature of companies is not essential enough to attract more heterogeneous applicants and it is highly likely that there are other elements which should be included in recruitment advertising to build an attractive employer brand.
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APPENDICES
Appendix A. The frequencies of keywords that were used to describe diversity dimensions in job advertisements on LinkedIn.
Appendix B. Codebook for the content analysis
The Mediating Role of Diversity in Recruitment
Advertising on LinkedIn
Codebook
Gintare Daukantaite
11181206
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
Luzia Helfer 3/02/2017
General guidelines
The goal of this content analysis is to examine the job advertisements, posted on LinkedIn by small-sized and large companies in the European Union and compare them with the characteristics of the applicants.
The data collection and coding for this content analysis should be conducted following the guidelines described below:
The data file is an Excel file, consisting of two sheets. In the first sheet, the data has to be entered, in the second one there are short explanations of the items that are used. In the first sheet each line is dedicated to one job advertisement and the columns are dedicated for items that are used for coding.
Coders: Gintare Daukantaite
Units of analysis: LinkedIn job advertisements
Time frame: Unlimited time period, starting from the last advertisements posted
Accessing the data and selecting advertisements
To gain the access to the data for coding, LinkedIn social network should be used. The users, who are responsible for coding, should be able to use a LinkedIn Premium account to get all the required data. Step-by-step instruction on selecting the job
advertisements is described below: Step 1: Login to your LinkedIn account
Step 2: In the job preferences – set the company size to less than 250 employees, add the locations (all countries that belong to EU, see the list of all EU countries in Appendix B(a) and conduct the first search for the job advertisements in small-sized companies. Then choose the sorting option, according to the date, not relevance. Divide the total amount of found job
advertisements by 800 and you will receive a number (y). , Starting from the last page (the latest date), select the y-th advertisement for coding. To conduct the search of the job advertisements by large companies, repeat the same process, after changing the option of company size to more than 250 employees.
Copy and paste all advertisements to a PDF file for the availability in the case of deactivation of job advertisements on LinkedIn platform.
Step 3: To access the data about applicants, scroll down in each of the job advertisement to the section „Competitive intelligence about other applicants“. From this section it is possible to collect data about the number of applicants, their education levels,their seniority levels, and locations they are from. Moreover, from below of that section, you can collect the data about the company‘s hiring trends over the past 2 years, if there are 30 members of a company that are the users of LinkedIn. If the hiring trends are not provided, mark that in a coding sheet as well.
Copy and paste this data to the same PDF file as all the job advertisements. Items and defining keywords
Items of advertisement‘s formal details
No. {_} – enter a number of an examined job advertisement (1,2,3,4,5...).
date {_}{_} {_}{_} {_}{_}{_}{_} – select a date of coding from a calendar.
company_location {_____}– choose from a drop-down list of possible locations where the company is situated.
job_location {_____} – choose from a drop-down list of possible locations where the job is situated.
company_size {_____} – choose from a drop-down list of possible options (‘small-sized‘ or ‘large‘).
no_of_employees {_____} – choose from a drop-down list of possible options of the exact number of employees (‘1-10‘,’11-50‘,’51-200‘,‘201-500‘,‘501-1000‘,‘1001-5000‘,‘5001-10,000‘,’10,000+‘).
link {_} – copy a link of a job advertisement from the browser and paste it in the cell.
company_title {_} – enter the title of a company who posted the advertisement (usually it is given under the advertised position title).
job_position {_) – enter the full title of the position which is advertised.
posting_date {_}{_} {_}{_} {_}{_}{_}{_} – select a date from a calendar when the advertisement was posted.
duration_ of_ ad – no entering needed, afterwards the difference between the coding day and the day ad was posted will be automatically determined by computing a simple mathematical operation.
Items of diversity in an advertisement
In this content analysis diversity is treated as a summable variable: amount of diversity. Therefore, items of diversity are expressed in numbers: the sum of detected keywords in a job advertisement of each item. Each found keyword has a value of 1 point, and for example, 3 found keywords of gender in a job advertisement would result in 3 points in a cell of gender. The keywords for each item are defined below:
language: any mention of language(s) or the phrases that include a word ‘language‘, such as Lithuanian, English, Greek, etc., or ‘local language‘, ‘European languages‘.
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DIVERSITY IN RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING ON LINKEDIN
49
ethnicity/race: any mention of nationality (for example: Dutch, English, Croatian, American, etc.), or race groups (american indian, alaska native, asian, african american, native Hawaiian, pacific islander, caucasian, white, hispanic, latino).
gender: any mentions of these words - ma(e)n, woma(e)n, male, female, gender, sex, girl, boy, transgender, LGBT, gay, lesbian, feminine, masculine.
age: any number of age (18 years old, less than 68 years old) or any mentions of these words: old, young, years, age, modern, teenage, adolescent, adult, aged, ageing, childish, elder,
disability: any mentions of a certain disease (HIV, anxiety disorder, etc.) and any mentions of these words: accessible, blind, challenged, disability, disabled, disablement,handicap, the handicapped, impairment, impaired, impediment, invalid, unable, limited in ability, learning difficulties, mute, physically challenged, special education, special needs, wheelchair, illness,
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DIVERSITY IN RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING ON LINKEDIN
practical, know-how, hands-on, inexperienced, ability, capability.
education: any mentions of these words - education, educated, educational, diploma, high school, university, college, school, degree, instruction, teaching, schooling, tuition, training, preparation, guidance, teacher, pupil, student, development, improvement, edification.
