Comparison of the Attractiveness of the Employer Brand in the Public and Private Sectors: The Viewpoints of Students at the Technical and Engineering Universities

In recent decades, the public sector faces serious challenges in competing with the private sector to attract specialized and talented individuals, and the share of public sector in this competition is declining. This research presents employer’s branding as an appropriate strategy for restoring and improving the attractiveness of the employer’s brand in the public sector as regards attracting experts and elites. Using a descriptive approach, a comparison of the attractiveness of the employer brand in the public sector and the private sector in Iran has been addressed. First, through qualitative interviews, the attractiveness of employer brand indexes is examined, from the view of senior students at the highest technical and engineering universities of Iran. Then, 694 questionnaires were collected through stratified random sampling. To test the hypotheses and to investigate the difference between respondents' views of the attractiveness of the employer brand in both public and private sectors, the mean comparison test was used. The findings show that the private sector, in all aspects of the employer brand, was more attractive compared to the public sector. Moreover, the value of innovation and development, respectively, has the highest level of divergence between private and public sectors. Considering the priorities of existing divergences and gaps, human resource managers can plan with the aim to promote the attractiveness of the employer brand of government agencies in the competition for attracting talents.