Knowing your targets in the war for talents

Sammanfattning: The war for talents is more intense than ever. In order to attract the best talents in this competitive environment, companies need to understand the preferences of potential applicants to specify and make their recruiting strategies more effective. However, surprisingly little is known about underlying factors that influence these preferences. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effect of one such factor, company experience, on potential applicants' perceived importance of different employer attributes. Drawing on previous employer branding research and employer knowledge theory, we formulate hypotheses which are tested using secondary data from 631 business students from the Stockholm School of Economics. The results show that students with more extensive work - and interactions with companies and their employees - experience perceived the importance of personal development, training for future career, and company reputation to be higher when applying for a job. This not only puts emphasis on the importance of underlying factors within the field of employer branding, but also creates important implications for researchers and recruiters.