A fit perspective approach in linking corporate image and intention-to-apply

Marketing principles not only attract consumers but also recruit talented people. This study applies person-organization fit to examine the relationship between an organization's corporate image and a job seeker's intention-to-apply. This study further explores how recruitment messages affect the relationship between corporate image and person-organization fit. The study focuses on human resources management positions and uses the information of real job openings from 28 companies as the research data. The research follows a formal encoding procedure for the recruitment messages and job advertisements as well as the completion of a survey; this study yields 1568 observation samples for analysis. The results from hierarchical linear modeling and the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis show that (1) corporate image relates positively to both intention-to-apply and person-organization fit, (2) person-organization fit fully mediates the relationship between corporate image and intention-to-apply, and (3) comprehensive recruitment messages strengthen the positive relationship between corporate image and person-organization fit.