Online recruiting: The effects of organizational familiarity, website usability, and website attractiveness on viewers’ impressions of organizations

Previous research on Internet recruitment has made the implicit assumption that recruitment websites influence viewers’ opinions of recruiting organizations. This study tested this assumption using a pretest/posttest design. Findings revealed that participants’ organizational favorability, image as employer, and organizational attractiveness perceptions were affected by their viewing of organizational recruitment websites. Greater increases in favorable organizational evaluations from the pretest measures to the posttest 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 individuals, regardless of their familiarity with the organizations maintaining the recruitment websites that they viewed.