Social influences in recruitment: when is word-of-mouth most effective?

We apply a policy-capturing design to examine the conditions under which word-of-mouth is most effective in recruitment. The effect of monetary incentives is compared to other key characteristics of word-of-mouth (the source, recipient, and message content) that might affect its impact on organizational attractiveness. In a first study, unemployed job seekers (N=100) were less attracted when they knew a monetary incentive was offered to the source of positive word-of-mouth. Conversely, they were more attracted when word-of-mouth was provided by a more experienced source (employee) and by a stronger tie (friend). These findings were replicated in a second study among employed job seekers (N=213). These results offer various implications for how recruiting organizations might make effective use of word-of-mouth