Winning the War for Talent: An Experimental Evaluation of Online Recruitment Campaigns Using Twitter

Abstract

Organizations have moved rapidly from traditional recruitment methods to online recruiting. The present study argues that the fierce demand for labor in technology-related industries —“second war for talent”— besieges workers in competitive environments to the point of lowering their propensity to engage in online recruiting campaigns. Collecting data from the social media platform Twitter, we take an experimental approach to investigate the effectiveness of online recruitment processes in attracting the attention of potential job candidates from different occupational categories. The findings reveal that workers in technology, engineering, and mathematical occupations (TEM) are less likely to react to recruitment processes than workers in other professional jobs. However, motivated advertisement designed according to individual group interests significantly increase the rate of participation of TEM, while these ads have no effect on workers from other sectors. Our experiment helps to explain pre-hiring outcomes. The findings have important implications for organizations seeking to boost their talent acquisition strategies.