![Sample our Economics, Finance,Business & Industry journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5931/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Economics-Finance-Business-Industry.jpg"})
Abstract
This contribution reports two studies that examined recruitment practices and applicant attraction in China. The first study explored the basic recruitment practices adopted by Chinese firms. With a sample of 168 Chinese companies, we found that (1) network-based recruiting practices were prevalent among Chinese firms especially in large companies and state-owned enterprises and (2) HR managers believed that compared with other recruiting practices, network-based recruiting practices could generate more effective pre-hire outcomes such as recruiting prospective applicants with speed and attracting highly competent employees. The second study further investigated the mechanism through which network-based recruiting practices were effective in generating applicant attraction. Using a three-wave panel survey research, we found that (1) the strength of social ties through which the companies were introduced to the applicant had positive effect on applicant attraction and (2) an applicant's perceived quality of information about the potential recruiting companies mediated the relationship between strength of ties and applicant attraction. Our findings had important implications to help firms design appropriate recruitment strategies in the Chinese context.
Acknowledgements
We should like to acknowledge the considerable contribution to this study made by Jia Tan who conducted much of the data collection. We are also grateful to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and suggestions. This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 70602007).
Notes
Hong Kong, and Macau are special administrative regions of PRC; Taiwan theoretically is a special administrative region of P.R. China.
