Employee Recruitment and Job Search Notes

Developing a Multilevel and Integrative Model of Employee Recruitment and Job Search

Employee recruitment is critical for organizational survival because an organization's success is confined within the limits of its human capital (Phillips & Gully, 2015).
Research has extensively examined predictors of applicant attraction (e.g., Uggerslev, Fassina, & Kraichy, 2012) and job search success.
The available literature lacks a bonding theory to organize findings and guide future research (e.g., Breaugh & Starke, 2000; Ployhart, 2006).
There have been few attempts to integrate the vast amount of research conducted into one integrative model. In the current literature, there are comprehensive models of job search and employee recruitment, and they developed independently of each other.
Employee recruitment can be defined as activities that influence the number and types of applicants who apply for a position, stay in the applicant pool, and accept a job offer (Breaugh, 2008).
- Recruiting practices target active job-seekers (those looking for jobs) and passive job-seekers (those employed or not interested but potentially open to opportunities).
- Active job-seekers can be attracted by passive methods (e.g., online job boards), while passive job-seekers require more active approaches.
Traditional recruitment methods include advertisements, employee/friend/relative referrals, employment agencies, internal job postings, walk-ins, campus visits, and job fairs (Zottoli & Wanous, 2000).
Online recruitment has become established through company websites, job boards, and social networking sites (Acikgoz & Bergman, 2016).
- LinkedIn is useful for targeting passive job-seekers.
The ultimate goal of employee recruitment is to fill job openings with individuals who possess the desired attributes.
Models of the employee recruitment process often limit discussion of job search behaviors.

Job Search

Job search can be defined as goal-directed activities initiated by an individual in response to a real or perceived discrepancy between an employment goal and current state of affairs (Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001).
Commonly examined topics include antecedents of job-seeking behaviors and the extent to which these behaviors lead to desired employment outcomes.
Job search behaviors include preparatory (information gathering) and active job search behaviors (sending resumes, contacting employers, interviewing) (Blau, 1994).
A distinction is generally made between job-search effort and job-search intensity (Kanfer et al., 2001).
Job search effort refers to the overall amount of effort spent by job-seekers looking for jobs.
Job-search intensity involves the frequency with which specific job-seeking behaviors are performed.
Job search behavior is influenced by applicant personality characteristics, locus of control, optimism, self-esteem, job-search self-efficacy, motives (e.g., financial need), social support, and demographic variables (age, gender, education, etc.).
Outcomes studied include employment status, number of job interviews, number of job offers, duration of job search, and perceptions of person-organization (P–O) fit and person-job (P–J) fit (Saks, 2006).
Literatures on employee recruitment and job search, although from different perspectives, both examine the factors that lead to a job opening being filled by an appropriate candidate.
Research on employee recruitment examines the issue from the organizational perspective and aims to predict factors influencing the applicant pool's quality and quantity.
The literature on job search examines the issue from the job-seeker perspective and investigates factors influencing whether an individual successfully lands a position that meets his or her expectations.
Both research areas aim to ensure that the right candidate fills the right job opening.
The literatures on job search and employee recruitment have followed their own paths without making a clear reference to one another.
Meta-analyses limit their scopes to either job search activities by individuals (e.g., Kanfer et al., 2001) or employee recruitment activities by organizations (e.g., Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones, 2005; Uggerslev et al., 2012).
Individuals and organizations reciprocally affect each other, but organizational and individual foci of research are rarely integrated.
Job search researchers have to take into account the ways in which organizations recruit in order to increase the chances that their recommendations are useful.
Researchers examining how organizations can generate the applicant pool they desire have to have a clear understanding of the job search processes employed by potential applicants.
A comprehensive and integrative approach to the employment process should take both the applicant perspective and the organizational perspective into account.
The literatures on employee recruitment and job search are both fragmented into very complex micro theories, which are aimed at explaining the relationships between pairs of a large number of variables. *Comprehensive models of job search and employee recruitment are scarce and were developed independently of each other (e.g., Y. Acikgoz Breaugh & Starke, 2000; Chapman et al., 2005; Kanfer et al., 2001; Saks, 2006).
An integrative model of the employment process based on the findings of both employee recruitment and job search literatures is necessary to better understand the process and to be able to give actionable recommendations to both organizations and job seekers.
Given the subject matter spans across levels of analysis, such a model would need to be multilevel.
There have been multiple calls in the recent literature for research and theory building that integrates organizational levels in a way that encompasses multilevel effects.
Employee recruitment and job search are two sides of staffing (e.g., Heneman, Heneman, & Judge, 1997).
The multilevel view to staffing has been introduced in at least two recent theoretical examinations of the topic (Phillips & Gully, 2015; Ployhart & Moliterno, 2011).
Phillips and Gully (2015) describe the recruitment process at multiple levels, but their model does not incorporate actions by job seekers and therefore describes the emergence of an applicant pool from only the organizational perspective.
Researchers need to provide a description of the process through which an applicant pool emerges in an employee recruitment effort by combining the actions and perspectives of both organizations and job-seekers.
A review of the variables discussed in employee recruitment and job search literatures is needed with the goal of identifying key constructs that influence employee recruitment and job search success.
Utilizing these key variables and concepts, an integration of both literatures with the goal of generating a model of the employment process should be attempted.
The major goal is to provide a basic framework to the study of employee recruitment and job search activities in a way that describes the reciprocal and multilevel nature of the process.

Theoretical Background

One theoretical approach which integrates individual and organizational approaches and explains the reciprocal influences between individuals and organizations is the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) framework by Schneider (1987).
According to the ASA framework (Schneider, 1987), people are differentially attracted to organizations based on an evaluation of the congruence between their own characteristics and the characteristics of an organization.
Next, in the selection stage only people with certain competencies are admitted into the organization through formal and informal selection procedures.
Finally, individuals who were initially attracted to and selected by an organization may leave the organization in the attrition phase if they discover later on that they do not fit.
The outcome of ASA processes determines the characteristics of people in an organization and thus “makes” the organization.
Employee recruitment is one of the key implications of his model by suggesting that it is through recruitment activities and the resulting applicant pool that the organization can manage the types of people they select.
The model covers the full cycle of employment with attraction generally referring to employee recruitment and job search, selection to organizational selection processes, and attrition to employee turnover.
The ASA framework has frequently been applied to how organizational characteristics emerge in the first place by examining the processes through which individuals with similar characteristics survive in an organization (e.g., Judge & Cable, 1997).
Attrition occurs not only after the employment relationship begins, but also in the recruitment and job search stage.
The full cycle of ASA occurs even before an individual begins working in an organization.
Individuals incompatible with the job/organization may not even be aware of the job opening in the first place, or withdraw during the recruitment process, leading to a distinct applicant pool for each job consisting of individuals that are more compatible to the position than the general population.
It is proposed that these three processes simultaneously operate in the employee recruitment and job search phase, as attrition does not only occur after an individual joins an organization but also at the early stages when an applicant drops out of the process or even when an individual decides not to apply for a job after initially being attracted.
Through this ASA process, a distinct candidate pool emerges for each job opening being filled.
Both employee recruitment and job search processes can be viewed as consisting of a few key processes including search and communication, evaluation and decision-making, and persuasion.
Recruitment activities include attempts by organizations to communicate their open positions to potential applicants, search for eligible candidates, persuade them to submit applications, evaluate whether they possess the desired qualities and make selection decisions, and persuade them to accept a job offer.
Job applicants search for job openings, evaluate whether they meet their criteria and make decisions to submit applications, com- municate with organizations, attempt to persuade the organizations to offer a job, and decide whether to accept a job offer.
Those activities that are aimed at being seen as a desirable employer (i.e., image recruitment; Gatewood, Gowan, & Lautenschlager, 1993) or candidate (e.g., maintaining a LinkedIn profile; Han, 2016) without searching for applicants or jobs can also be seen as persuasion attempts aimed at the other side.
These key processes also roughly correspond to the attraction-selection-attrition stages of the ASA framework and constitute the mechanism through which a distinct applicant pool emerges for each job opening.
In most cases, the first step in the process to a new employment relationship is searching and communicating, which is the attraction phase in the ASA framework in the context of employee recruitment and job search. Both organizations and individuals search for and communicate with one another, and it is through this process that the initial attraction occurs.
The search for desirable organizations or candidates in the context of employee recruitment and job search can also be seen as a communication process since both parties communicate with one another through recruitment sources.
One area of inquiry in the communication literature examines the predictors of media use (e.g., face-to-face vs. electronic), and there is evidence that individual characteristics of those who communicate influence the preference regarding communication channels (Minsky & Marin, 1999).
Given there must be a congruence between the preferred channels for communication to occur, and the evidence that channel choice is partly influenced by characteristics of those who communicate, this presents an early mechanism through which individuals with similar attributes are attracted to the same job opening.
Individuals and organizations with compatible characteristics will be aware of each other, which is one mechanism through which the attraction stage of the ASA model works in this context. This process is dubbed as “job awareness” in the proposed model.
Given the search behavior itself has a cost, after each search event the job-seekers and organizations are required to evaluate their options and make a decision regarding whether to continue the search or end by selecting from among the available options (Sonnemans, 1998). This is the selection phase in the ASA framework in the context of employee recruitment and job search.
Several choice goals may influence the way these decisions are made, including high accuracy, low effort, low negative emotion, and high justifiability (Sauermann, 2005).
Although these goals largely apply to job-seekers and has been proposed in the context of job-seeker decision-making, it is conceivable that the same goals drive the decisions made by the organizations, with the exception of low negative emotion.
For example, an organization may apply a highly valid selection system to ensure high accuracy, hire without doing so with cost concerns (i.e., low effort), and/or consider employment legislation in hiring to maximize justifiability.
Evaluation of options by individuals and organizations given one or more of these goals culminate in the construct of perceptions of fit, which is an immediate precursor to attraction to the job/organization by candidates.
Fit is loosely defined in this context simply as a congruence between needs and abilities of a candidate and supplies and demands by an organization (Kristof, 1996), and does not consider whether individuals and organizations share similar fundamental characteristics (i.e., the supplementary vs. complementary fit perspective), although this second type of fit is also certainly important in some contexts.
Once a decision has been made, the next step is persuading the candidate or the organization to accept a job offer or hire a job- seeker. If this persuasion does not occur, then the outcome is attrition by the individual from the applicant pool (or the organization from among the available options for the job seeker).
Persuasion takes place through multiple stages, beginning with an initial attitude formation and attraction by both parties, progressing through forming of intentions to act, and culminating in actual be- havior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). An important attribute of this process is its longitudinal nature such that these initial attitudes are updated over multiple instances of interaction between the parties (Swider, Zimmerman, & Barrick, 2015).
As individuals and organizations sift through multiple options during this stage, perceptions of the discrepancy between current situation and the desired situation and contextual factors influence whether or not attraction occurs or is maintained.
Since the processes described in the preceding paragraphs occur across levels, it is important to take a multilevel perspective when studying recruitment and job search. That is, individuals and organizations search for and communicate with one another, and subsequently evaluate and attempt to persuade the other party.
Whereas the way job-seekers approach these tasks are largely de- termined by individual-level psychological factors such as personality and self-efficacy (e.g., Kanfer et al., 2001; Sauermann, 2005), how organizations manage their recruitment activities is largely determined by higher-level organizational and contextual factors such as organizational strategy, culture and external environment (Phillips & Gully, 2015).
In addition, the emergence of an applicant pool for a job opening is in itself a multilevel process such that multiple candidates with certain qualifications are attracted to a recruitment message by an organization, the content and style of which is presumably determined by organizational-level phe- nomena. Since this represents higher-level constructs shaping lower-level properties (i.e., characteristics of job applicants) that in turn emerge into a collective construct (i.e., applicant pool; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), the whole process should be examined through a multilevel lens.
The proposed model attempts to accomplish two major goals. First, unlike prior models of employee recruitment (e.g., Celani & Singh, 2011; Schreurs & Syed, 2011) and job search (e.g., Schwab, Rynes, & Aldag, 1987; Soelberg, 1967), the proposed model attempts to combine research on employee recruitment and job search in one model delineating the major factors influencing both individual and organizational outcomes. Second, it emphasizes the longitudinal and multilevel nature of the process and describes some of the ways in which this influences recruitment and job search outcomes

Search and Communication: Attraction

Although more specific and strategically crafted objectives can be defined (Breaugh & Starke, 2000), one common goal of re- cruiting activities for many organizations is to bring the job opening to the awareness of as many qualified applicants as possible and convincing them to apply.
Applicant attraction to the job and the organization has been studied as the nexus variable of most recruitment studies (e.g., Chapman et al., 2005).
The literature provides several variables that potentially influence the ef- fectiveness of employee recruitment practices and result in applicant attraction (Chapman et al., 2005; Kanfer et al., 2001; Uggerslev et al., 2012), including job seeker characteristics, job and organizational characteristics, and perceptions of fit.
Job seeker characteristics include the values, needs, interests, and personality characteristics of the potential applicant, while job and organizational characteristics include the specific attributes about the job the applicants seek to obtain such as pay, benefits, working hours as well as organizational factors such as company image, size, work environment, and location.
In searching for desirable candidates, or- ganizations use several recruitment sources such as online job boards or formal referral systems to communicate with potential applicants and inform them about these characteristics of the job and the organization.
The characteristics of applicants and jobs/organizations influence attraction to a job opportunity in two ways. First, these characteristics directly influence perceptions of fit, which in turn influence applicant attraction.
In terms of how characteristics of job seekers influence organizational attraction, Baslevent and Kirmanoglu (2013) examined if personal needs and values influenced the extent to which individuals found certain job attributes important when choosing a job. The results revealed that need and values influenced preferences towards several job attributes such that jobs that involved using initiative were appealing to those with a strong inclination for power and achievement while the same jobs were not desirable for those who valued security and conformity.
In an examination of whether applicant personality influenced recruitment outcomes, Cable and Judge (1994) found that personality traits predicted attraction to different pay policies.
- More materialistic job- seekers ascribed greater importance to pay level
- Job seekers with internal locus of control were attracted to organizations offering flexible benefit systems
- Individualists were more likely to prefer individual-based pay systems than collectivists
- Risk- averse job seekers were more attracted to organizations which applied non-contingent pay systems than risk-takers.
Job and organizational characteristics that influence perceptions of fit include instrumental attributes of the job and the orga- nization such as working conditions, hours, pay/benefits, and the location of the work, as well as symbolic attributes such as organizational image, reputation, and job prestige. This distinction between symbolic and instrumental attributes is important as they correspond to two major forms of persuasion as defined by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Kitchen, Kerr, Schultz, McColl, & Pals, 2014).
Instrumental attributes are likely to follow a central route to persuasion given they are likely to include non- judgmental information about the job and the organization; whereas symbolic attributes are likely to persuade individuals through a peripheral route to persuasion given their subjective nature.
In predicting applicant attraction, Chapman et al. (2005) found a corrected correlation coefficient of $0.30$ for job characteristics. The job characteristics examined in that study was compensation and advancement ( $0.27$ ), pay ( $0.27$ ), and type of work ( $0.37$ ).
Uggerslev et al. (2012) found a corrected correlation coefficient of $0.36$ for job characteristics including pay ( $0.23$ ), benefits ( $0.31$ ), and the characteristics of the job ( $0.42$ ).
Turban and Cable (2003) found that firm reputation was positively related to the number and quality of applicants who sought employment with a firm.
Applicant and organizational characteristics directly influence perceptions of fit, which is a major predictor of applicant attraction (Chapman et al., 2005).
The second way in which individual and organizational characteristics influence perceptions of fit is through their influence on the way in which individuals and organizations search and communicate. In other words, these factors influence the manner in which individuals seek for jobs or organizations search for candidates, which leads to an early attrition from the process and contributes to the emergence of a distinct applicant pool for each job opening.
In order for perceptions of fit to occur, the first condition to be met, even before a congruence between applicant characteristics and job/ organizational characteristics, is that the applicant should learn about a job opportunity. That is, before being able to evaluate the extent to which there is a congruence, potential applicants must first acquire the knowledge that there is a job opportunity.
As part of their recruitment efforts, organizations use recruitment sources such as media advertising, official company websites, or online job boards to convey information about positions they are looking to fill. In addition, organizations also use subtler signaling mechanisms to transmit information about the job and the organization (Celani & Singh, 2011).
Using the signaling theory's doctrine of market signaling (Spence, 1973), organizations strategically plan the style and content of their outreach efforts such as recruiting interactions or image advertising to create an image consistent with the way they desire to be perceived as an employer (Barber, 1998).
The forms and content of recruitment activities are influenced by the characteristics of the job and the organization.
- Organizations are likely to perform different types of activities when filling a high-level management position versus an entry level blue collar position. The differences may include such things as the recruitment source being preferred (e.g., executive search firms for high-level management vs. point-of-purchase for entry level part-time jobs) or content of the recruitment message (e.g., an emphasis on pay for high level positions vs. an emphasis on experience for entry level jobs).
- Different types of organizations that differ by size, sector, etc. are likely to prefer different types of recruitment activities. For example, small local firms may prefer to use different recruitment channels (e.g., word- of-mouth, newspaper ads) than larger firms with a better reputation (e.g., using official website, LinkedIn). There may also be differences between firms in different sectors. For example, a tech company may be expected to prefer a different approach in reaching their candidates (e.g., internships, “hackathons”) than a fast-food company (e.g., point-of-purchase methods, local job fairs).

Proposition 1. The characteristics of the job and the organization influence the content and form of recruitment activities performed by organizations.

The characteristics of job seekers may influence the types of activities they will perform when searching for jobs.
Several individual-level variables, including personality, self-efficacy, needs, and social support were significant predictors of job search behavior - which is supported by meta-analytic empirical evidence (Kanfer et al., 2001).
Applicant characteristics such as needs, personality, education, or experience may in- fluence the recruitment sources preferred by job seekers.
Recruiting sources vary in effectiveness because they reach individuals from different demographic groups, who may be more or less qualified from each other for the job.
A highly extroverted individual or an individual with a high need for affiliation may prefer to use personal connections such as friends or family to search for jobs whereas job seekers with higher levels of education may be more likely to use internet or professional connections.
Demographic characteristics of job seekers, such as their age, gender, or location may also influence the sources of information they use when searching for jobs. This is the reasoning on which targeted recruitment is based.

Proposition 2. Applicant characteristics influence the type of job search activities performed by job seekers.

The interaction between signals from organizations regarding job and organizational characteristics and personal characteristics of potential applicants leads to perceptions of person-job and person-organization fit, which in turn determines the extent to which an individual is attracted to a specific job opening (Ehrhart & Ziegert, 2005).
Job seekers must first learn about the availability of a job opportunity in order for this interaction to occur.
It is the formation of this knowledge in the job seekers' minds concerning the availability of a job that makes it possible for an interaction between job seeker characteristics and organizational characteristics to occur. However, whether this happens is in part determined by a congruence between the characteristics of the job/organizations and the applicant.
There is evidence that individual characteristics influence communication channel pre- ference (Minsky & Marin, 1999), and this presents an early mechanism through which individuals with similar attributes are attracted to the same job opening.
When an organization or an individual uses a specific recruitment channel to seek candidates or job openings, what is found will most likely be individuals or organizations with certain characteristics leading them to use those channels in the first place. For example, a novel method of recruitment may only be used by innovative organizations and individuals using the same recruitment method to search for jobs may have a certain personality (e.g., high openness).
Using the same channel to communicate is a prerequisite for being aware of a job opening (or a desirable candidate), it follows that individuals and organizations with compatible characteristics will be aware of each other, which is one mechanism through which the ASA process operates in the recruitment and job search stage. Referred to here as “job awareness”, whether this happens to a large extent depends on a congruence between the recruitment activities engaged in by organizations and job search activities performed by job seekers.
The likelihood that job awareness occurs depends on a match between recruitment activities and job search activities, which implies that applicants to a job are not a random collection of individuals but share certain characteristics, leading to the emergence of a distinct applicant pool for each job opening. As will be discussed in the section describing the multilevel perspective, this non-independence of candidates in the applicant pool is the main reason for taking a multilevel perspective to research on employee recruitment and job search.

Proposition 3. A congruence between job search and organizational recruitment activities is required to create “job awareness”; which is a prerequisite of perceptions of fit.

Perceptions of fit is conceptualized as a mediator between job/organizational and job seeker characteristics and applicant attraction.
Perceptions of fit were found to be the most proximal predictors of applicant attraction whereas job/ organization and job seeker characteristics were relatively more distant predictors (Chapman et al., 2005; Uggerslev et al., 2012).
It is unlikely that job and organizational characteristics alone lead to attraction to the job and the organization in the same way for all applicants. Instead, what is more plausible is that job seekers form perceptions of fit based on the characteristics of the job and the organization and their own characteristics, which then leads to applicant attraction.
There are several alternative conceptualizations of perceptions of fit, including supplementary vs. complementary fit, needs- supplies fit, and demand-abilities fit (Kristof, 1996).

Evaluation and Decision-Making: Selection

Once an organization and a job seeker become aware of one another, they evaluate the merits of one another and make early decisions regarding whether to include each other in a shortlist of potential jobs/candidates.
This stage typically does not last very long, since it only involves the decision to apply by the job seekers and an initial elimination based on basic job requirements by the organization.
This can also be seen as an early selection process in which individuals and organization select those that will be included in their initial pools of options. This is largely influenced by perceptions of fit between the individual and the organization, which then creates an initial attraction.
According to the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA, Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) attitudes (i.e., organizational attraction) and subjective norms (i.e., social influence from others) both have direct effects on intentions, which then predict behavior.
- The attitudes in terms of recruitment and job search domains are comprised of the positive or negative feelings potential applicants have towards the job opening. Perceptions of fit lead to either a positive or a negative attitude towards the job.
- In the TRA subjective norms are also thought to influence intentions to behave in a certain way because individuals are also likely to consider what significant others will think about the focal behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). In terms of employment decisions, subjective norms represent the thoughts of significant others about pursuing employment with the prospective job.
Being attracted to a job opportunity or favorable reactions by significant others may not necessarily lead to intentions to apply.
Employment gap is introduced to account for the combined effect of multiple factors that influence whether an initial attraction will lead to intentions to apply.
Employment gap is defined as the difference between an individual's current employment situation and the employment situation which is thought to be offered by the job opening being considered.
Job embeddedness represents individuals' links to, fit with, and sacrifice required to leave from their organizations and communities (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001), while job satisfaction is generally defined as a positive or negative emotional state towards one's job (Harrison, Newman, & Roth, 2006).
For individuals for whom the job opportunity offers an improvement over their current employment situation, attraction to the job leads to intentions to apply.

Proposition 4. Employment gap moderates the relationship between applicant attraction and job pursuit intentions.

Persuasion: Attrition

Once an attraction to a job occurs and this leads to intentions to submit an application, the next step is acting upon those intentions, which includes attempts by individuals and organizations to persuade each other about their positive attributes. This occurs through multiple interactions between a candidate and an organization during which either party may decide to end the process.
One important aspect of the proposed model is its emphasis on the longitudinal nature of this process since this is the stage attrition is most likely through candidates dropping out of or being eliminated from the applicant pool or eliminating some of the job opportunities for the sake of more desirable ones.
According to TRA, intentions have a direct effect on the subsequent behavior. Several meta-analyses examined this relationship between intentions and behavior and provided empirical evidence for this relationship (e.g., Armitage & Conner, 2001; Webb & Sheeran, 2006).
Job pursuit intentions predict job pursuit behavior.
It is arguably more appropriate to treat the process between applicant attraction, job pursuit intentions, and job pursuit behavior as recurring cycles of attitude-intention-behavior rather than a single linear process from attitudes to behavior. That is, every action in the process through which individuals seek employment may be seen as a precursor of intentions for the behavior in the following cycle.
One type of job pursuit behavior that may result from job pursuit intentions is making an initial application for a job. However, this behavior rarely results in a job offer, as most organizations screen applicants through several stages to make sure they hire the best candidates. A more likely outcome of an initial application behavior is invitation to a second screening hurdle such as a selection test or a job interview.
Swider et al. (2015) found that perceptions of P–J and P–O fit were not stable but were likely to change during the first (i.e., generating applicants) and second (i.e., maintaining applicant status) stages of the recruitment process, and this change was related to maintaining interest in the job.
Walker et al. (2013) found that during the maintenance stage of recruitment (i.e., after submitting their applications), individuals were likely to update their perceptions of organizational justice through successive interactions with organizational agents, and these updated perceptions were likely to in- fluence an initial attraction in a positive or a negative way.
The factors that influence an individual to apply for a job or the perceptions of those factors may change after the initial application, and this change has the potential to influence whether or not the individual stays in the applicant pool and eventually becomes an employee of the organization.
Perceptions of fit is the most proximal predictor of applicant attraction, and applicant attraction is the most proximal predictor of job pursuit intentions. However, since perceptions of fit are likely to change during the recruitment process (Swider et al., 2015), job pursuit intentions may also change, attenuating the relationship between intentions measured at one time and job pursuit behavior.
As applicants keep collecting information about the job and the organi- zation through outside sources and an increased amount of contact with company representatives through selection procedures, the initial positive perceptions of fit may attenuate, lowering applicant attraction and intentions to stay in the applicant pool. Recruiters' behaviors may also contribute to this attenuation of perceptions of fit (Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart, 1991).

Proposition 5. Intentions to pursue a job may change after initial application because of updated perceptions of fit.

In addition to perceptions of fit, perceptions of employment gap may also change in the subsequent cycles as applicants generate an initial pool of possible job opportunities.
Despite the theorizing by Soelberg (1967) who proposed that individuals were likely to evaluate more than one job opportunity simultaneously, most research on job search has ignored this possibility and assumed that evaluation of a job opportunity occurs independently of other options. However, it is likely that job-seekers generate more than one job option and evaluate multiple job opportunities simultaneously (Barber, 1998).
The meta-analysis by Chapman et al. (2005) found that perceived alternatives was not a significant predictor of acceptance intentions. However, the meta-analysis by Uggerslev et al. (2012) found that even though perceived alternatives did not predict applicant attraction at the “generating applicants” stage of the recruitment process, it became a significant predictor at the “maintaining applicant status” stage.
Perceptions of alternative desirable job opportunities may provide applicants with an increased sense of satisfaction with their current employment situations, although they may currently be unemployed or unsatisfied with their current jobs, as they may believe that there is a likelihood for them to achieve a good em- ployment outcome. This decreased sense of employment gap, in turn, may influence the relationship between attraction and in- tentions towards some of the less desirable job opportunities in the initial pool of job options generated.
Their model suggests that as they search and apply for jobs, job seekers receive feedback from the environment regarding their employability and react to this feedback in a way to reduce the discrepancy between their desired level of employability and the feedback they receive. Similarly, as organizations screen candidates and individuals evaluate their chances of getting job offers from multiple organizations, their employment gap is updated and thought to substantially influence the decision regarding whether to stay in the applicant pool of a certain organization.

Proposition 6. Intentions to pursue a job may change after initial application because of updated perceptions of employment gap through alternative employment opportunities.

Multilevel Implications

The applicant pool of each job opening consists of individuals who share certain attributes leading them to use the same recruitment source when searching for jobs in the first place.
Job-seekers in each applicant pool are more similar to each other than they are to other individuals applying for other jobs at the same organization or in different organizations.
Job-seekers are nested in applicant pools, which are then nested in organizations.
One important concern for multilevel theory- building and research is determining the focal unit, also known as level of theory, which refers to entities about which generalizations are to be made (Hitt et al., 2007). Another area of concern is determining levels of measurement and analysis, referring to the unit at which data are attached and hypotheses are tested, respectively (Rousseau, 1985).
The nesting arrangement described in this model is highly complex as both influences from the specific job (i.e., job characteristics) and the organization (i.e., organizational char- acteristics) need to be considered simultaneously (Mathieu & Chen, 2011). This makes it challenging to determine the focal unit and levels of measurement and analysis in testing the proposed model.
For some job openings, the characteristics of the job may be more salient than that of the organization, leading to the focal unit to reside at the job level. For example, sales jobs in many retail organizations would attract individuals with similar characteristics regardless of the specific organization. For other job openings, there may be a very salient organizational image leading to individuals sharing certain attributes being attracted to jobs in that organization and hence the focal unit residing at the organizational level. For example, tech start-ups usually attract those with an entrepreneurial mindset given the potentially risky compensation scheme generally offered by these organizations.
The characteristics of the job and the organization should be considered on a case-by-case basis and decisions regarding levels of theory, measurement, and analysis must be made accordingly when applying a multilevel perspective to employee recruitment and job search as proposed in this model.
Emergence refers to the process through which phenomena at lower levels combine and create a higher-level construct which is distinct from its lower-level origins (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000; Ployhart & Moliterno, 2011). Emergence occurs through either a composition or a compilation process. In composition, the resulting construct is the sum of its lower-level antecedents whereas in compilation, the lower-level entities combine in a complex and non-additive fashion (Mathieu & Chen, 2011).
The higher-level construct that