Web Recruitment: Impact of Aesthetics and Playfulness on User's Initial Affective Reactions as it Relates to Applicant Attraction

摘要

Acquiring pools of qualified job applicants can be a costly endeavor for organizations. Many companies have turned toward technology for assistance in attracting talent, thus the design of recruitment websites becomes an important consideration. While there are many aspects to website design, our focus is on a website's "facade," namely playfulness and aesthetics, and their impact on applicant attraction. We explore the relationships among organizations' recruitment website facades, initial affective reactions to the facades, and applicant attraction to that organization. Responses to a questionnaire completed by senior-level university students provide data for analysis. The results support our hypotheses that initial affective reactions mediate the relationship between both website playfulness and website aesthetics with applicant attraction. These findings reflect the importance of website design when the Internet is used as a recruitment channel.