Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Online recruiting: The effects of organizational familiarity,

website usability, and website attractiveness on viewers’
impressions of organizations q
Phillip W. Braddy a,*, Adam W. Meade b, Christina M. Kroustalis b
a
Center for Creative Leadership, One Leadership Place, P.O. Box 26300, Greensboro, NC 27438-6300, United States
b
Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Previous research on Internet recruitment has made the implicit
Available online 20 June 2008 assumption that recruitment websites influence viewers’ opinions
of recruiting organizations. This study tested this assumption using
Keywords: a pretest/posttest design. Findings revealed that participants’ orga-
Internet recruiting nizational favorability, image as employer, and organizational
Online recruiting attractiveness perceptions were affected by their viewing of orga-
Web recruiting
nizational recruitment websites. Greater increases in favorable
Website usability
Website attractiveness
organizational evaluations from the pretest measures to the post-
Signaling theory test measures occurred with organizations maintaining websites
that were easy to navigate and/or that were appealing. Contrary
to predictions made by signaling theory, recruitment websites
had similar effects on the organizational impressions of all individ-
uals, regardless of their familiarity with the organizations main-
taining the recruitment websites that they viewed.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The use of the Internet for organizational recruiting has been on the rise throughout the past dec-
ade. Recent survey results indicate that approximately 90% of large organizations have official recruit-
ment web pages (Cappelli, 2001), and these pages are the second most frequently visited sections

q Portions of this study were completed while the first author was affiliated with the Department of Psychology at North
Carolina State University. Also, an earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 20th Annual Conference of the Society
for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Los Angeles, CA, April, 2005.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 336 286 4407; fax: +1 336 286 4434.
E-mail address: braddyp@leaders.ccl.org (P.W. Braddy).

0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.05.005
 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001 2993

(after the home page) of an organization’s website (Peters, 2001). Moreover, organizations in both the
private and public sectors use their websites to recruit applicants more than for any other human re-
source management activity (Elliot & Tevavichulada, 1999). Despite the widespread use of the Internet
for organizational recruitment, however, research on the efficacy of this medium lags considerably be-
hind practice. For these reasons, several authors have called for increased research on Internet recruit-
ment (Cober, Brown, Keeping, & Levy, 2004; Highhouse & Hoffman, 2001; Lievens & Harris, 2003).
Recently, researchers have responded to these calls for additional research by investigating condi-
tions that may facilitate effective use of the Internet as a recruitment tool. This research has largely
focused on website design features and content-related variables that influence job seekers’ percep-
tions of an organization’s recruitment image, its image as an employer, job seekers’ job-pursuit inten-
tions, and job seekers’ person-organization (P-O) fit perceptions (e.g., Braddy, Thompson, Wuensch, &
Grossnickle, 2003; Cober, Brown, Levy, Cober, & Keeping, 2003). The website design features that have
been investigated in past research have primarily included usability, the attractiveness of recruitment
websites in terms of their colors, fonts, pictures, and bulleted versus paragraphs of text (Braddy et al.,
2003; Cober et al., 2003; Thoms, Chinn, Goodrich, & Howard, 2004; Zusman & Landis, 2002), and per-
son-organization (P-O) fit assessment tools (Dineen, Ash, & Noe, 2002). Website content variables
studied have included information regarding compensation, organizational culture, and training
opportunities (Braddy, Meade, & Kroustalis, 2006; Cober et al., 2003).
Despite these recent research efforts, a fundamental gap in the Internet recruitment literature re-
mains. Namely, while previous studies have examined the correlates of recruitment website features
using between-subjects designs, researchers have not directly and empirically demonstrated that
viewers’ impressions of an organization can be changed by viewing the organization’s recruitment
website. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to empirically determine if applicants’ over-
all favorability and perceptions of organizations as employers changed after viewing their respective
recruitment websites using a pretest/posttest design. Specifically, signaling theory was evaluated as a
potential explanatory mechanism for the impact of recruitment websites. This study also assessed the
extent to which any changes in participants’ perceptions of organizations may be attributed to the
usability and attractiveness of these organizations’ websites and whether organization familiarity
moderated these changes.

1.1. Signaling theory and changes in job seekers’ perceptions of organizations

When considering whether or not an organization’s recruitment website can change viewers’
impressions of the organization, it is important to consider the psychological processes utilized by
the viewer of the website. Signaling theory (Spence, 1973, 1974) provides a theoretical underpinning
for why an organization’s recruitment website may affect a viewer’s perception of the organization.
According to this theory, when an individual does not have complete data, or is uncertain of the posi-
tion he or she should take on a matter, he or she typically draws inferences based on cues from avail-
able information. Job seekers are often limited in their knowledge about a potential hiring
organization (Rynes & Miller, 1983); thus, signaling theory suggests that any information that a job
seeker views will guide his or her impressions of the hiring organization. As a result, variables that
do not seem to have a strong direct connection to a job or organization (e.g., a recruiter’s attire or
knowledge) can become cues for what it would be like to work for that organization and may also
influence individuals’ attraction to hiring organizations (Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart, 1991; Turban,
2001; Turban, Forret, & Hendrickson, 1998).
In the context of Internet recruiting, signaling theory suggests that in the absence of other informa-
tion about an organization, applicants will draw inferences about the organization based on peripheral
cues gained from its website. This primarily occurs because applicants assume that these cues or char-
acteristics are representative of the entire organization (Rynes et al., 1991). For example, if an organi-
zation maintains a website that is difficult to navigate, job seekers may use this information about the
organizational website to form a general negative impression of the organization because they assume
that is indicative of how other practices and policies at the organization are implemented. Or, they
may form a specific conclusion that like its website, the organization is disorganized or that the entire
recruitment process will be too cumbersome to complete. Regardless of the specific perceptions
2994 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001

formed by prospective job applicants, an organization’s recruitment website has salient signaling va-
lue for job seekers under many different circumstances, particularly when they have little knowledge
about, or familiarity with, the hiring organization (Rynes et al., 1991). Signaling theory predicts that
the effect of an organization’s website will be greater for persons less familiar with the organization
than for persons with prior knowledge or experience with an organization. Thus, we propose the fol-
lowing hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1. Participants’ ratings of organization favorability, overall image as an employer, and
attractiveness as an employer will change after their exploration of organizations’ recruitment
websites.

Hypothesis 2. The changes in favorability, overall image as an employer, and attractiveness ratings
from pretest to posttest will be greater for individuals who have low, rather than high, familiarity with
the companies maintaining the recruiting websites that they view.
If changes in participants’ perceptions of organizations do occur after exposure to their recruitment
websites as predicted, it is important to ascertain what aspects of these websites may be responsible
for these changes. While many possibilities exist, this study specifically focused on the role of website
usability and attractiveness.

1.2. Website usability

The usability of websites has traditionally been defined as the perceived ease with which appli-
cants can access desired information from a website (e.g., Karat, 1997; Nielsen, 2000). While research
on Internet recruiting is still in its infancy, several studies have examined the effect of website usabil-
ity on viewers’ impressions of organizations. Braddy et al. (2003) showed that the ease of navigation to
a job advertisement on a company’s website was positively related to general impressions of the hir-
ing organization under investigation. Similarly, Cober et al. (2003) demonstrated that favorable usabil-
ity perceptions were associated with participants’ increased willingness to pursue a job with an
organization and to recommend a prospective employer to their friends. Additionally, Sinar, Reynolds,
and Paquet (2003) investigated the effects of system speed and website user-friendliness on job seek-
ers’ evaluations of company image after these job applicants (who were applying for sales positions)
completed the recruitment and selection processes implemented by the hiring organizations. Results
revealed that both usability variables were moderately positively correlated with job seekers’ organi-
zational image evaluations. Other research investigating the effects of website usability on organiza-
tional attractiveness (Williamson, Lepak, & King, 2003), website attitudes or evaluations (Chen, 1999),
and satisfaction with website use (Palmer, 2002) have been similarly supportive. On the basis of this
literature, we propose the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3. Participants’ website usability perceptions will be positively related to their attrac-
tiveness ratings of organizations as potential employers.

Hypothesis 4. Participants’ impressions of website usability will be positively correlated with ratings
of how favorably they view an organization in general and their overall impressions of the organiza-
tion’s image as an employer.

Hypothesis 5. Participants’ website usability perceptions will be positively correlated with self-
reported changes in the way they felt about the organization.

1.3. Website attractiveness

Prior research has examined the attractiveness of recruitment websites by looking at a variety of
dimensions, such as colors, fonts, layouts, pictures, and type of text (i.e., bulleted vs. paragraphs;
e.g., Braddy et al., 2003; Zusman & Landis, 2002). Cober et al. (2003), for example, found that job seek-
ers’ evaluations of aesthetic features (e.g., color) of two organizational websites chosen from Fortune
 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001 2995

Magazine’s Best Companies to Work For List were positively associated with their job-pursuit intentions
and their willingness to recommend these prospective employers to a friend. A second study demon-
strated that website appeal was positively related to participants’ ratings of their attraction to orga-
nizations and their intentions to apply for positions with the hiring companies that maintain
appealing recruitment websites (Thoms et al., 2004). Also, Zusman and Landis (2002) indicated that
applicants preferred to work for organizations that maintained websites with the most appealing col-
ors, fonts, and pictures. Based on the findings from the aforementioned literature, we propose the fol-
lowing hypotheses:
Hypothesis 6. Viewers’ website attractiveness perceptions will positively correlate with their ratings
of attraction to the organization as an employer.

Hypothesis 7. Viewers’ website attractiveness perceptions will positively correlate with overall rat-
ings of how favorably they viewed the organization and their impressions of the organization’s image
as an employer.

Hypothesis 8. Participants’ website attractiveness perceptions will be positively related to self-

reported changes in the way they felt about these organizations.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

Participants in this study were 217 undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses at a
large southeastern university. The sample was 54.38% female, and the mean age of respondents
was 19.39 (SD = 2.97). Seventy-seven percent of participants were Caucasian, 12.5% African American,
2.1% Hispanic, 2.1% Asian, and 6.3% listed ‘‘other” as their racial group. The sample consisted of 61.75%
freshmen, 16.59% sophomores, 12.44% juniors, and 9.22% seniors. Fifty-three percent of participants
reported they had previously submitted a job application online, and participants indicated they spent
an average of 17.10 (SD = 12.65) hours on the Internet per week.

2.2. Procedure and measures

Data collection took place in a small research laboratory. Each data collection session consisted of
one or two participants and lasted approximately 45 minutes. When participants arrived to the labo-
ratory, they were given an overview of the experimental task and the assumptions they were expected
to make while performing this task. Specifically, participants were asked to assume the role of job
seekers who had recently graduated (or were about to graduate) from college and to review the ‘‘jobs”
or ‘‘careers” portions of four organizational recruitment websites. In each session, these websites were
randomly chosen from a pre-selected list of 10 Fortune 500 companies (see Appendix A), which were
selected by the authors of the present study for the diversity of their websites in terms of usability and
appeal. While viewing the websites, participants were also asked to assume that all jobs were in their
areas of interests, were in equally attractive locations, and that they offered equally acceptable pay
and benefits. In other words, participants were told to consider all things about the jobs to be equal
and to evaluate these organizations based exclusively on what they learned about the organizations
via their recruitment websites.
After receiving their task instructions, participants completed a pre-task survey (Time 1) that asked
questions about the Fortune 500 organization whose recruitment website they would subsequently be
exploring. The first three items of the survey measured participants’ familiarity with the company (i.e.,
‘‘In general, how familiar are you with this company?”; Turban, 2001), how favorably participants
viewed the company in general (i.e., ‘‘How favorable is your impression of this company in general?”),
and how they evaluated the company’s overall image as an employer (i.e., ‘‘Overall, how would you
evaluate this company’s image as an employer?”; Turban, 2001). Participants used a seven-point
2996 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001

Likert-type scale for all items and were allowed to choose a ‘‘?” response option for the favorability
and image items if they had no prior knowledge of, or exposure to, the organization they were asked
about. Approximately 25% and 38% of respondents endorsed the ‘‘?” response options for the favor-
ability and image items, respectively. In addition, participants completed an eight-item organizational
attraction measure (a = 0.96; e.g., ‘‘I like this company a lot”) using a seven-point Likert scale
(1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree). It was created by combining existing measures from Turban
(2001) and Turban and Keon (1993) with new items written by the authors of the present study.
Again, a ‘‘?” response option was provided for participants that had little prior exposure to the orga-
nization. Only 10.61% of respondents endorsed this option. Responses of ‘‘?” were later treated as
missing data in all analyses.
After responding to the pre-task survey, participants were instructed to view a Fortune 500 com-
pany’s ‘‘jobs” or ‘‘careers” website for ten minutes. Afterwards, they completed a post-task survey
(Time 2) containing the same pre-task items, though ‘‘?” responses were not allowed because all par-
ticipants were presumed to have formed opinions about the organization whose website they viewed.
Additionally, participants used a seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) to
respond to four items that measured their website usability perceptions (a = 0.89; e.g., ‘‘It was easy to
find what I was looking for on this website”), four items that measured the perceived attractiveness of
the organization’s website in terms of color, layout, image, and overall look (a = 0.93; e.g., ‘‘The layout
of this website was really appealing”), and a final item that asked if exposure to the company’s website
affected their impressions of the organization under investigation (i.e., ‘‘This website changed the way
I feel about the hiring company”).
The entire procedure used for evaluating the first company’s website as described above was re-
peated for three additional Fortune 500 organizational websites. Thus, the total number of views of
organizational websites was 868 (217  4). Afterwards, participants completed a final survey. This
survey asked questions about participants’ demographic characteristics, the amount of time they
spent on the Internet per week, and whether they had ever submitted a job application online.

2.3. Data analysis

Because participants were randomly assigned to rate four companies out of a possible ten, the nat-
ure of the data was highly complex. The same participants rated four organizations (i.e., a within-sub-
jects design) across two time periods (i.e., repeated measures), so observations were not independent
(i.e., the sample size could not be treated as 4  217 or n = 868), and the random order of viewing the
websites further complicated the data. SAS’s Proc Mixed statement was used to account for the mul-
tilevel nature of the data (see Verbeke & Molenberghs, 1997, for an overview). This procedure assesses
both fixed and random effects in order to control for the interdependence of the data (within individ-
uals), the order of web page viewing, and the incomplete design (only 4 of 10 websites were viewed by
each respondent), as well as main effects of the specific company being rated.

3. Results

Hypothesis 1 stated that participants’ perceptions of company favorability, overall image as an em-
ployer, and attractiveness as an employer would significantly change from pretest to posttest. Analy-
ses via SAS’s Proc Mixed procedure were employed to examine this hypothesis. Results revealed that
there were significant changes from pretest to posttest for company favorability, F(1, 216) = 9.54,
p < 0.01, overall image as an employer, F(1, 216) = 24.33, p < 0.0001, and organizational attractiveness,
F (1, 216) = 7.03, p < 0.01 (see Table 1). These findings supported Hypothesis 1.
Hypothesis 2 stated that the changes in participants’ ratings of organizational favorability, overall
image as an employer, and organizational attractiveness from pretest to posttest would be greater for
individuals with low, rather than high, familiarity with the organizations that maintained the websites
that they viewed. Analyses1 via SAS’s Proc Mixed procedure were employed to examine this direct test

1
The familiarity variable was centered prior to including it in an interaction.
 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001 2997

Table 1
Descriptive statistics for study variables at Time 1 and Time 2

Time 1 Time 2
N M SD N M SD
Website usability – – – 868 5.12 1.35
Website attractiveness – – – 868 4.63 1.46
Familiarity 868 3.78 1.81 868 5.11 1.21
Favorability 654 4.79 1.26 868 5.26 1.16
Image as an employer 539 4.83 1.31 868 5.42 1.20
Attractiveness as an employer 775 4.63 1.06 868 5.06 1.24
SR change in opinions – – – 868 4.76 1.42

Note: Time 1 = pretest measures and Time 2 = posttest measures.

Table 2
Correlations between website usability and attractiveness and perception variables at Time 2

1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Website usability –
2. Website attractiveness 0.55** –
3. Familiarity 0.21* 0.21* –
4. Favorability 0.43* 0.48* 0.53* –
5. Image as employer 0.47* 0.50* 0.43* 0.81* –
6. Attractiveness 0.48* 0.49* 0.36* 0.74* 0.75* –
7. SR change in opinion 0.33* 0.40* 0.12* 0.35* 0.37* 0.40*
*
p < 0.001.
**
p < 0.0001.

of signaling theory. Results indicated that the Familiarity  Time (pretest/posttest) interaction fell short
of statistical significance for organizational favorability, F(6, 216) = 1.51, p = 0.18, overall image as an em-
ployer, F(6, 216) = 0.95, p = 0.46, and organizational attractiveness, F(6, 216) = 1.89, p = 0.08. Hypothesis 2
was therefore not supported.
Positive relationships between viewers’ website usability perceptions and ratings of organizational
attractiveness as an employer (H3), and their website usability impressions and their overall percep-
tions of company favorability and the organization’s image as an employer (H4) were assessed in two
ways. First, we examined the zero-order correlations between these variables at Time 2 (see Table 2).
Second, we computed change scores for attractiveness as an employer, favorability, and overall image
as an employer as the difference between these ratings across the two time periods (i.e., Time
2 Time 1)2 and subsequently computed correlations between the change scores and website usability
ratings (see Table 3). As expected, both methods revealed that website usability was moderately, posi-
tively related to all three criterion variables, indicating that people who thought a company’s website
was easy to use also perceived the company more favorably as a potential employer. Therefore, Hypoth-
eses 3 and 4 were supported.
Hypothesis 5 stated that participants’ website usability perceptions would be positively related to
self-reported changes in the way they felt about the organizations whose websites they viewed. This
hypothesis was tested by examining the correlation between viewers’ website usability ratings and
their responses to the item, ‘‘This website changed the way I felt about the hiring company”. As shown
in Table 2, participants who had more favorable website usability impressions reported that the web-
sites had more strongly changed their impressions of the hiring organizations than people with less
favorable website usability impressions. Hypothesis 5 was therefore supported.
Hypotheses 6 and 7 stated that there would be positive relationships between viewers’ website
attractiveness perceptions and their attraction to the organization as an employer, their general

2
When computing change scores and their associated correlations, we were forced to use a different data structure. Thus, the
interdependence of the data within individuals was not accounted for with these correlations.
2998 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001

Table 3
Correlations between website usability and attractiveness and changes in perception variables

1 2 3 4 5 6
Website usability –
Website attractiveness 0.55* –
D Familiarity 0.17* 0.14* –
D Favorability 0.32* 0.27* 0.48* –
D Image as Employer 0.32* 0.27* 0.36* 0.71* –
D Attractiveness as Employer 0.43* 0.36* 0.29* 0.52* 0.56* –

Note: D indicates change (Time 2 Time 1).

*
p < 0.0001.

favorability impressions, and their overall image of the organization as an employer. These hypotheses
were assessed using change scores and posttest ratings as described with Hypotheses 3 and 4. As
shown in Tables 2 and 3, both methods indicated that people with more favorable website attractive-
ness perceptions also had greater perceptions of organizational attractiveness, favorability impres-
sions, and images of the company as an employer; thus, Hypotheses 6 and 7 were supported.
Hypothesis 8 stated that participants’ website attractiveness perceptions would be positively cor-
related with self-reported changes in the way they felt about the organizations that maintained the
recruitment websites they viewed. This hypothesis was assessed by examining the correlation be-
tween participants’ website attractiveness ratings and their ratings on the item, ‘‘This website changed
the way I felt about the hiring company”. As shown in Table 2, viewers with more favorable website
attractiveness impressions reported that the websites had more strongly changed the way they
viewed the hiring organizations than participants with less favorable website usability perceptions.
This supported Hypothesis 8.
Finally, we conducted post-hoc exploratory analyses that investigated the relationships among
organizational familiarity, favorability, image as an employer, and organizational attractiveness using
both change scores (as previously described) and posttest ratings. As shown in Tables 2 and 3, mod-
erate to strong positive correlations were found among all four study variables.

4. Discussion

While it has long been assumed that organizational recruitment websites can and do influence
viewers’ perceptions of organizations, this study is the first to use a pretest/posttest research design
to test this assumption. This study makes three unique contributions to the Internet recruitment lit-
erature. First, we found that Internet recruitment websites do affect viewers’ perceptions of organiza-
tions. Participants’ perceptions of organizational favorability, overall image as an employer, and
organizational attractiveness increased after viewing the recruitment websites. These results indicate
that a well designed organizational website can have a considerable impact on improving viewers’
impressions of the organization, both in general and as a potential employer.
A second contribution of this study is that it provides the first explicit and comprehensive test of
signaling theory as the mechanism by which viewers’ impressions of an organization are influenced by
its recruitment website. Contrary to the prediction made by signaling theory, we found that the
strength of the effect that recruitment websites had on job seekers’ perceptions was not a function
of participants’ familiarity with the organizations maintaining the sites. However, given that this is
the first known test of signaling theory in the Internet recruiting domain, we recommend that future
research be done to conduct additional tests of this theory.
A third contribution of our study is that we found moderately strong positive relationships be-
tween website usability and both viewers’ impressions of organizations in general and as potential
employers. These results are consistent with findings of Zusman and Landis (2002), Braddy et al.
(2003), and others; however, our carefully controlled pretest/posttest design allowed for additional
certainty of these previous findings. Moreover, similar to Zusman and Landis (2002), we found a
strong positive association between participants’ perceptions of the attractiveness of Fortune 500
 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001 2999

organizations’ websites and how favorably they viewed these organizations. Both of these findings
support the predictions made by signaling theory that peripheral cues of a recruiting medium, such
as an organizational website, can exert influences on applicants’ perceptions of hiring organizations.
Moreover, as noted by Thompson, Braddy, and Wuensch (2008), work by Tversky and Kahneman
(1973) may shed some light onto why website attractiveness matters to job applicants. Thompson
et al. point out that Tversky and Kahneman’s work reveals that individuals place more emphasis on
and demonstrate preferences for stimuli that are easily accessible in memory. In a similar way, they
suggest individuals may place more emphasis on and thus show greater preferences for attractive
websites assuming that they stay more accessible in memory over time as compared to unattractive
websites. Thus, this may in turn lead one to view an organization more favorably when it maintains an
attractive website.
This study’s results suggest that caution should be exercised when organizations develop their
recruitment websites. Namely, organizations should ensure that prospective job applicants can obtain
necessary job and organizational-related information from their websites; they should also make sure
that their websites portray the organization in an attractive way using a combination of appealing col-
ors, fonts, and images. The salience of this implication becomes clear when considering research find-
ings that directly link job seekers’ organizational impressions with their inclinations to pursue
employment with hiring organizations (Gatewood, Gowan, & Lautenschlager, 1993; Lemmink, Schuijf,
& Streukens, 2003; Thompson et al., 2008).
The present study also revealed two important findings via post-hoc exploratory analyses. First,
organizational familiarity was moderately, positively correlated with participants’ ratings on image
as an employer and organizational attractiveness. These results are congruent with Turban’s (2001)
findings, which revealed a positive correlation between undergraduates’ familiarity and attraction rat-
ings of a local petro-chemical firm. These results contradict Lemmink et al.’s (2003) assertion that
there is no relationship between company familiarity and company employment image. Second, these
post-hoc exploratory analyses also revealed moderate to strong positive correlations among partici-
pants’ ratings on organizational favorability, image as an employer, and organizational attractiveness.
These findings reinforce the notion proposed by previous researchers (e.g., Gatewood et al., 1993) that
job seekers are more attracted to companies for whom they have positive regard.

4.1. Limitations and directions for future research

Findings of the current study should be interpreted in the context of four notable limitations. The
first limitation of this study is that we collected data from a relatively young, undergraduate student
sample that may differ from older job seekers on characteristics, such as their familiarity with hiring
organizations and their technological savvyness. While we encourage future research to investigate if
these findings can be replicated in samples of older job seekers, we believe there is less cause for con-
cern regarding this limitation when considering that many organizations employ Internet recruitment
strategies specifically to recruit young graduates and passive job seekers (Galanaki, 2002) who are
very similar to our respondents. In addition, it was estimated by the US Census Bureau in 2000 that
roughly half of individuals 25 years of age or older in the US population had not attended college
(see Bauman & Graf, 2003); this suggests that many job seekers who enter the workforce in the US
are similar in age and educational level to this study’s respondents.
A second limitation is that participants were not allowed to view websites that were aligned with
their career interests. Instead, they were required to view Fortune 500 organization websites that
were chosen by the authors of the present study. Although this may have increased the risk that par-
ticipants did not take their tasks seriously, we limited each experimental session to no more than two
participants and required participants to view each website for an allotted period of time to ensure
that they were diligent in completing their tasks and in giving their responses to our measures.
A third limitation is that four variables (e.g., image as an employer and company favorability) in our
study were measured with a single item. Single item measures have lower reliability than multi-item
scales, and thus their correlations with other variables are somewhat attenuated. Despite the reduced
reliability of our construct measures, we found statistically significant correlations among these four
3000 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001

variables and other study variables (e.g., website usability); thus, we do not believe this limitation had
a significant bearing on our conclusions.
A fourth limitation is the study’s narrow scope. This study attempted to answer basic research
questions about website features that influence job seekers’ perceptions of organizations, but it failed
to provide specific guidelines on how to improve organizational recruitment websites. For example,
our results suggest color, font, and image are influential, but these findings do not lend themselves
to clear recommendations regarding the types of colors, fonts, and images that organizations should
include on their websites to enhance their appeal to job seekers. If organizations are to fully realize
the potential of the Internet as a recruiting tool, future research should be geared towards determining
the specific aspects of additional website features (e.g., size and content) that predominately influence
job seekers’ impressions of organizations.
A final promising area of research is to determine how the Internet fits into the overall recruiting
programs of organizations. In other words, does the information gleaned from an organization’s web-
site have a weaker or stronger impact on potential applicants than campus recruiters, company refer-
rals made by friends, and newspaper advertisements? Likewise, the influence of company perceptions
of climate and culture in the recruitment process also need to be weighted against more tangible fac-
tors (e.g., salary and benefits) when applicants evaluate a prospective employer.
In sum, research on the role of the Internet in employee recruitment is still very much in its infancy.
Thus, technological resources and the amount and variety of information that appear on the Internet
far outpace empirical theory-based research on this topic (e.g., Anderson, 2003; Williamson et al.,
2003). We attempted to address this void in the literature by showing that recruitment websites have
an effect on viewers’ perceptions of hiring organizations regardless of their organizational familiarity.
Importantly, this study provides the first explicit and comprehensive test of signaling theory in the
Internet recruiting domain. We also demonstrated several features (i.e., website usability and appeal-
ing colors, fonts, and images) that are partially responsible for the impact these websites have on job
seekers. Despite this study’s contributions, many important research questions regarding the use of
the Internet as a recruiting tool still need to be empirically examined.

Acknowledgement

We thank Jennifer Stearn, Joshua Storie, Tonya Elliot, and J.C. Ferguson for their assistance during
the data collection phase of this project.

Appendix A

List of 10 Fortune 500 organizations whose recruitment websites were used in the present study
3M Company
Capital One Financial Corporation
Dell Computer Corporation
Eastman Kodak Company
United Parcel Service
Wachovia Corporation
General Motors Corporation
IBM
General Electric
Dow Chemical

References

Anderson, N. (2003). Applicant and recruiter reactions to new technology in selection: A critical review and agenda for future
research. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 11, 121–136.
Bauman, K. J., & Graf, N. L. (2003). Educational Attainment: 2000 (Brief No. C2KBR-24). Washington, DC. US Census Bureau.
Retrieved 31.05.07. <http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html>.
 P.W. Braddy et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008) 2992–3001 3001

Braddy, P. W., Meade, A. W., & Kroustalis, C. M. (2006). Organizational recruitment website effects on viewers’ perceptions of
organizational culture. Journal of Business and Psychology, 20(4), 525–543.
Braddy, P. W., Thompson, L. F., Wuensch, K. L., & Grossnickle, W. G. (2003). Internet recruiting: The effects of web page design
features. Social Science Computer Review, 21, 374–385.
Cappelli, P. (2001). Making the most of on-line recruiting. Harvard Business Review, 79, 139–146.
Chen, Q. (1999). Attitude toward the site. Journal of Advertising Research, 39(5), 27–37.
Cober, R. T., Brown, D. J., Keeping, L. M., & Levy, P. E. (2004). Recruitment on the net: How do organizational web site
characteristics influence applicant attraction? Journal of Management, 30(5), 623–646.
Cober, R. T., Brown, D. J., Levy, P. E., Cober, A. B., & Keeping, L. M. (2003). Organizational web sites: Web site content and style as
determinants of organizational attraction. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 11, 158–169.
Dineen, B. R., Ash, S. R., & Noe, R. A. (2002). A web of applicant attraction: Person-organizational fit in the context of web-based
recruitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 723–734.
Elliot, R. H., & Tevavichulada, S. (1999). Computer literacy and human resource management: A public/private sector
comparison. Public Personnel Management, 28, 259–274.
Galanaki, E. (2002). The decision to recruit online: A descriptive study. Career Development International, 7, 243–251.
Gatewood, R., Gowan, M., & Lautenschlager, G. (1993). Corporate image, recruitment image, and initial job choice decisions.
Academy of Management Journal, 38, 414–427.
Highhouse, S., & Hoffman, J. R. (2001). Organizational attraction and job choice. In C. L. Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.).
International review of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 16, pp. 37–64). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Karat, J. (1997). Evolving the scope of user-centered design. Communications of the ACM, 40(7), 33–38.
Lievens, F., & Harris, M. M. (2003). Research on Internet recruiting and testing: Current status and future directions. In C. L.
Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.). International review of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 16, pp. 131–165). New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Lemmink, A., Schuijf, J., & Streukens, S. (2003). The role of corporate image and company employment image in explaining
application intentions. Journal of Economic Psychology, 24(1), 1–15.
Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing web usability. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing.
Palmer, J. W. (2002). Web site usability, design, and performance metrics. Information Systems Research, 13(2), 151–167.
Peters, K. (2001). Five keys to effective e-cruiting. Ivey Business Journal, 65(3), 8–10.
Rynes, S. L., Bretz, R. D. J., & Gerhart, B. (1991). The importance of recruitment in job choice: A different way of looking. Personnel
Psychology, 44, 487–521.
Rynes, S. L., & Miller, H. E. (1983). Recruiter and job influences on candidates for employment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 68,
147–154.
Sinar, E. F., Reynolds, D. H., & Paquet, S. L. (2003). Nothing but Net? Corporate image and web-based testing. International Journal
of Selection and Assessment, 11, 150–157.
Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87, 355–374.
Spence, M. A. (1974). Market signaling: Information transfer in hiring and related screening processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Thompson, L. F., Braddy, P. W., & Wuensch, K. L. (2008). E-recruitment and the benefits of organizational web appeal. Computers
in Human Behavior, 24(5), 2384–2398.
Thoms, P., Chinn, S. J., Goodrich, J., & Howard, G. (2004). Designing personable and informative job recruiting web sites: Testing
the effect of the design on attractiveness and intent to apply. Psychological Reports, 94(3, part 1), 1031–1042.
Turban, D. B. (2001). Organizational attractiveness as an employer on college campuses: An examination of the applicant
population. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58, 293–312.
Turban, D. B., Forret, M. L., & Hendrickson, C. L. (1998). Applicant attraction to firms: Influences of organization reputation, job
and organizational attributes, and recruiter behaviors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 52(1), 24–44.
Turban, D. B., & Keon, T. L. (1993). Organization attractiveness: An interactionist perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78,
184–193.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5,
207–232.
Verbeke, G., & Molenberghs, G. (1997). Linear mixed models in practice: A SAS-oriented approach. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Williamson, I. O., Lepak, D. P., & King, J. (2003). The effect of company recruitment web site orientation on individuals’
perceptions of organizational attractiveness. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63(2), 242–263.
Zusman, R. R., & Landis, R. S. (2002). Applicant preferences for web-based versus traditional job postings. Computers in Human
Behavior, 18, 285–296.