This research examines the effect of reputational word of mouth (WoM) from trusted sources on naive job applicants’ organizational attraction toward a possible employer. We used a policy-capturing experiment to identify the weight placed on WoM relative to other types of hypothetical information that college students with limited work experience might have about a job. Our within-person results show that WoM affects attraction over and above other types of company-dependent information about pay, benefits, and learning opportunities, which underscores the importance of WoM to inexperienced job seekers. Further, our between-person results demonstrate that the weight placed on WoM depends on individual differences in career decision self-efficacy (CDSE). Specifically, people with higher CDSE placed a greater weight on WoM than people with lower CDSE. These findings are important to career counselors who work with college students to understand how they appraise and make decisions about jobs to pursue. Further, these findings have value to organizations by underscoring the importance of reputational information to entry-level job seekers.

中文翻译：

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在考虑工作时，口碑对大学生有多重要？组织吸引力的政策捕捉研究

这项研究研究了可信赖来源的声誉口碑（WoM）对天真的求职者对潜在雇主的组织吸引力的影响。我们使用一项政策捕获实验来确定相对于工作经验有限的大学生可能对某项工作可能具有的其他类型的假设信息而言，WoM的权重。我们的内部调查结果表明，与其他公司相关的有关薪酬，福利和学习机会的信息相比，WoM会影响吸引力，这突显了WoM对经验不足的求职者的重要性。此外，我们的人际关系结果表明，对妇女的重视程度取决于职业决策自我效能感（CDSE）的个体差异。特别是，CDSE较高的人比CDSE较低的人更重视WoM。这些发现对与大学生一起工作的职业咨询师来说很重要，他们可以了解他们如何评估和决定要从事的工作。此外，这些发现通过强调声誉信息对入门级求职者的重要性，对组织具有价值。