Human Capital MBA

Recruitment Strategy and Employer Branding: Why Hiring Is a Signaling Problem Before It Is a Sourcing Problem

Why a recruitment plan built from Module 07's workforce forecasts is a different thing from posting a job ad and hoping. What Ambler and Barrow's employer brand concept and Backhaus and Tikoo's employer value proposition actually ask an organization to decide, how signaling theory explains why job seekers discount generic claims and credit specific, costly-to-fake ones, and why decades of research on realistic job previews, from Wanous's original 1973 telephone-operator study to Premack and Wanous's 1985 meta-analysis, keep finding a real but modest effect on turnover, not the dramatic fix popular hiring advice often promises.

2 Nov 2026 · 26 min read