Effects of communicating family ownership and organisational size on an applicant's attraction to a firm: An empirical examination in the USA and China

•A challenge of family firms is to attract qualified non-family applicants.•This challenge may be affected by the belief that family firms are small.•This experiment tests the effects of size and ownership on attractiveness.•Results indicate that providing information about organisational size affects attractiveness and not information about family ownership.

In recent years, family business owners have indicated that attracting and retaining qualified non-family applicants is one of the greatest challenge that firms face. Although there is some empirical research that explores why family firms face this challenge, most of this work has focused on understanding the role that human resource practices play in the success of recruitment practices in the family firm. This article explores the effects of information provided in initial recruitment messages on perceptions about attributes of the organisation (i.e., job security, advancement, compensation, and prestige) and how these perceptions influence attractiveness to a firm. Over 300 respondents from the USA (N = 177) and China (N = 127) read one of four organisational descriptions created by manipulating information about organisational size (50 vs. 500 employees) and family ownership (explicit vs. absent). The results indicate that explicitly communicating information about family ownership did not affect perceptions or attractiveness to a firm, while explicit information about organisational size did. Additionally, participants from China and the USA differed in terms of how information about family ownership influenced their perceptions about advancement opportunities. The implications of these results for family business recruitment strategies are discussed.