The purpose of this study is to examine how potential applicants' exposure to an organization's social media page relates to their subsequent organizational attractiveness perceptions and wordof-mouth intentions. Based on signaling theory and the theory of symbolic attraction, we propose that potential applicants rely on perceived communication characteristics of the social media page (social presence and informativeness) as signals of the organization's employer brand personality (warmth and competence), which in turn relate to organizational attractiveness and word-of-mouth. Data were gathered in a simulated job search process in which final-year students looked for an actual job posting and later visited an actual organization's social media page. In line with our hypotheses, results show that the perceived social presence of a social media page was indirectly positively related to attractiveness and word-of-mouth through its positive association with perceived organizational warmth. Perceived informativeness was indirectly positively related to these outcomes through its positive association with perceived organizational competence. In addition, we found that social presence was also directly positively related to organizational attractiveness. These findings suggest that organizations can use social media pages to manage key recruitment outcomes by signaling their employer brand personality.

Nurses' perceptions of employers can be positively influenced by seeing a hospital's social media page. Hospitals can thus employ social media to improve their employer brand image and attractiveness.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of potential applicants’ awareness of employees being rewarded for referrals on organisational attractiveness, based on credibility theory and the multiple inference model. In a first study (N = 450), final‐year students were less attracted to the organisation when they knew employee referrals were rewarded, which was partially explained by lower credibility perceptions. Moreover, varying the specific characteristics of the referral bonus program (i.e. timing, size, type, recipient) did not improve potential applicants’ perceptions of credibility and attractiveness. A second study (N = 127) replicated the negative effect of referral bonuses on organisational attractiveness and found that it could be explained by both potential applicants’ inferences about the referrer's other‐oriented motive and lower referrer credibility. Whether employees explicitly stated that their referral reason was bonus‐driven or not did not affect these results.

This study examines how social media pages can be used to influence potential applicants’ attraction. Based on the uses and gratifications theory, this study examines whether organizations can manipulate the communication characteristics informativeness and social presence on their social media page to positively affect organizational attractiveness. Moreover, we examine whether job applicants’ sought gratifications on social media influence these effects. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design is used. The findings show that organizations can manipulate informativeness and social presence on their social media. The effect of manipulated informativeness on organizational attractiveness depends on the level of manipulated social presence. When social presence was high, informativeness positively affected organizational attractiveness. This positive effect was found regardless of participants’ sought utilitarian gratification. Social presence had no significant main effect on organizational attractiveness. There was some evidence that the effect of social presence differed for different levels of social gratification.