Employer branding and intention to apply for a job using social media as moderator in banking industry, Pakistan.

Abstract

Regardless of the growing popularity of the concepts of branding, familiarity and reputation support on social media in marketing, there is inadequacy in HRM’s understanding of how these persuade potential employees to apply for jobs. The shortage of the skilled employees and need of potential applicant’s interest apply is critical issue under the shadow of globalization, brain drain and employee turnover. Despite the great influence of social media and employer branding on recruitment in western countries, a country like Pakistan is still unaware of the employer branding, familiarity and reputation through social media, especially in the context of banking industry. Therefore, sic research objective of this study were classified into two groups. In the first one, researcher looks at the relationship between exogenous variable named employer branding, employer familiarity, employer reputation and intention to apply for job in banks.in the second one, a moderative variable called “social media” was also observe in order to know the strength between three exogenous and an endogenous intention to apply. The six hypothesized relation were tested by analyzing 389 samples resulting in a cross sectional study. Data analysis was done by using spss (20.0) and smart PLS-SEM (3.0). The result showed that employer branding, familiarity and reputation are significant in intention to apply for jobs. The interaction term of social media was only significant in the relationship between employer branding and intention to apply. The result of the study approved signaling theory. Furthermore, the function of the signal can be weak or bogus if there are distortions in signals. There may misleading information and familiarity with other sector that cause (motivates, intrigues, mislead) employees to consider intention to apply. There may be stories or vanity on social media that can distort signals between employer reputation and intention to apply. Hence, the results indicated the achievements of research objectives, which were evaluated by prior studies and it eventually proceed to the future recommendation and implication.