How do employees choose employers? - Building the consideration and non-consideration set of employer brands

Abstract

Scholarship on employer attractiveness has traditionally focused on the employment attributes driving the choice of a brand to work for. However, in the consumer realm, recent anti-consumption research has revealed that studying the reasons for not choosing a brand is as valuable for understanding consumer behaviour as researching their motivation for choosing brands. This paper aims to examine which employment attributes influence both the consideration and non-consideration set of employer brands in a study with 380 undergraduate and graduate student surveys. Results show that the reasons for consideration (organizational characteristics) and non-consideration (ethical attributes) are different, and both are mostly attributable to the employee's fit with the brand rather than to job attributes. This paper defines the set of attributes that potential employees consider and unveils differences in the construction of the consideration and non-consideration set of employer brands.