The impact of the wording of employment advertisements on students' inclination to apply for a job

Marise Born, Toon Taris*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

65 Citations (Scopus)
494 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Students' inclination to apply for a job was examined as a function of (1) the wording of the desired candidate's profile specified in the employment advertisement and (2) applicant gender. Previous research found that women are more inclined than men to apply for jobs that include a profile corresponding to their gender (i.e., a profile containing prototypically feminine instead of masculine personal characteristics). Based on Fiedler and Semin's (1996) Linguistic Category Model, we expected that this effect would decrease if the desired profile was worded in terms of behaviors/verbs instead of nouns/adjectives. ANOVA supported this reasoning for women but not for men. We conclude that organizations may increase the number of women applying for particular jobs by changing the presentation form of the advertisement.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)485-502
Number of pages18
JournalThe Journal of Social Psychology
Volume150
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Sept 2010

Research programs

  • ESSB PSY

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