How to attract talent in the digital age
: what drives Millennials in online job applications?

  • Luís Diogo Moura Pereira (Student)

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

Purpose: The current study’s focus is to understand how Millennials vision online job offers in terms of importance and transparency across several factors. It further tries to understand how these scores can be influenced by the background of the individual, either referring to the age, gender or national context of the job searchers. Methodology: A survey was performed to 317 individuals, where they evaluated in a relative scale how they evaluated the importance of several factors when looking into online job offers, and also how they accessed employers’ transparency in the same setting. The difference between the two measures is here named of “knowledge gap”, and it represents an opportunity for organizations willing to reduce it, and this way build a competitive advantage by appearing more open and honest to candidates than competitors. Findings and Conclusions: The existence of the “knowledge gap” was shown across the factors considered, which justifies the need of more information being provided by companies. Still, the age and experience of the individual proven to be ineffective explanatory proxies. In regards to the importance of such factors, gender proved to be statistically significant in sensibly half the factors; a contrary result was found when national context was tested as an explanation for differences. Conclusions point to the need of more specific segmentation of the candidate profiles and adaptation to the needs of the targeted audience.
Date of Award19 Jul 2016
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Universidade Católica Portuguesa
SupervisorSusana Frazão Pinheiro (Supervisor)

Designation

  • Mestrado em Gestão: Programa Internacional

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