Recruiting Global Travelers: The Role of Global Travel Recruitment Messages and Individual Differences in Perceived Fit, Attraction, and Job Pursuit Intentions

• Published in: Personnel psychology Vol. 67; no. 1; pp. 153 - 201
• Main Authors: Phillips, Jean M., Gully, Stanley M., McCarthy, John E., Castellano, William G., Kim, Mee Sook
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Durham Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2014
• Subjects: Individual Differences; Job Applicants; Job hunting; Occupational mobility; Organizational behavior; Recruitment; Studies; Travel
• ISSN: 0031-5826; 1744-6570
• DOI: 10.1111/peps.12043

Organizations often require managers to travel globally to fill international roles. Attending to fit with an organization's need for international mobility and global openness during recruiting could increase the proportion of effective global managers in an organization's applicant pool. We use recruitment research and theory to develop and test a conditional process model of the relationship between recruitment messages and job seeker perceived fit, attraction, and job pursuit intentions, depending on job seekers’ global openness and willingness to travel globally. Recruitment messages include information about a job's travel requirements and the global presence of the business. Two studies were undertaken to test our hypotheses. Analyses were conducted with conditional process modeling using nonlinear bootstrapping. Study 1, involving 230 job seekers, found that applicants’ willingness to travel interacted with recruiting messages about a job's global travel requirements to relate to job pursuit intentions through perceived job fit and job attraction. Study 2, involving 260 participants recruited through Mechanical Turk, indicated that global openness interacted with a global recruitment message, and willingness to travel interacted with a travel recruitment message, to relate to job pursuit intentions through job and organizational dimensions of perceived fit and attraction.