Employee Review Websites as Source of Recruitment Communication: The Role of Source Credibility, Realistic Information, and Specific Information

Persuasive research shows that more credible sources of information are more influential in changing the attitude and gaining behavioral compliance. In this article, the authors examine whether perceptions regarding source credibility, realistic information and specific information in the web recruitment context differs on three different recruitment media. The three different recruitment media taken in this study are employee review website (www.glassdoor.com), professional networking website (www.linkedin.com) and the company's own webpages. The employee review website and professional networking website belong to the company independent website category since they are not controlled by a particular organization. The company's own webpages belong to a company dependent website category as every organization has its own website. This study compares and investigates company independent websites versus company dependent websites as a tool for providing recruitment communication on three different parameters, namely source credibility, realistic information, and specific information. The study is conducted in India and the results are based on responses obtained from 283 students actively looking for jobs. The results suggest that job seekers perceive company independent websites (employee review website and networking website) to be more credible. These websites provide more realistic and specific information than the company dependent website. The authors also examine the role of realistic information, source credibility and specific information as antecedents to organizational attractiveness. How social media can be instrumental in employee engagement is also discussed.