Investigating the Relationship between Perceived Communication Characteristics of an Organization's Social Media Page and Job Seekers' Job Pursuit Intentions: The Mediating Role of Employer Brand Personality

This study primarily seeks to investigate the relationship between the perceived communication characteristics of the organization's social media page and the job pursuit intentions of job seekers. It also tries to find the mediating role of organizational personality in the association with perceived communication characteristics of the organization's social media page and job seekers' job pursuit intentions. Based on signaling theory, we propose that job seekers rely on perceived communication characteristics of a social media page (social presence and informativeness) as signals of the organization's personality (warmth and competence), which in turn relate to job pursuit intention.
To achieve this purpose, we used the correlational research design of the quantitative method. We carried out an online survey and the research model was tested by distributing a questionnaire among 384 final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students or recent graduates from universities. A simple random sampling method was used to select students. After answering the demographic questions, the respondents visited the company's Instagram page through a link and completed the questionnaire after viewing the page. SPSS 24 and LISREL 10.2 software were used for data analysis.
 
The findings showed that there is a relationship between the perceived communication characteristics of the organization's social media page (perceived social presence and perceived informativeness) and job seekers' job pursuit intentions through the mediating role of organizational personality (perceived organizational warmth and perceived organizational competence). Based on the achieved results, any decrease or increase in the perceived social presence and perceived informativeness on the organization's social media page would decrease or increase the perceived organizational warmth and perceived organizational competence of job seekers. Job seekers view an organization's social media page with unrelated or less relevant information as an indicator of disorder, which may be influential in their overall perception of organizational competence. On the other hand, the applicability of the information on the social organization page affects the perception of potential applicants about the quality of the company.
This research provides interesting implications for organizations trying to recruit talent. The findings suggest that organizations can signal their employer brand personality through their own social media page, which in turn positively relates to job pursuit intentions. Based on these findings, organizations need to find out which social media platforms their target groups use to look for information about potential employers and to create and maintain a page on those platforms. Organizations that want to increase potential applicants' perceptions of the organization as a warm employer, should create a page high in social presence. To strengthen the signals a social media page conveys, organizations should act deliberately on what and how they communicate on their page and how this can be interpreted by potential applicants. To this end, the collaboration between an organization's communication or public relations and the recruitment department seems crucial.