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Have a drink on me - Excursions as a part of employer branding
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Electronic archive copy is available via Aalto Thesis Database.
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en
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61 + 3
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Abstract
There is a growing demand for professionals in the IT sector, and companies invest heavily to student relations in order to find potential employees. In order to differentiate themselves and to attract students into applying, companies engage in employer branding actions. One interesting phenomenon that has appeared are company excursions, informal events organized for students by companies. In this study the use of excursions as a part of employer branding is examined from both organizations’ and students’ viewpoints. The study uses the theoretical frameworks of person-organization fit and signaling theory to see how excursions affect the employer brand and to examine how employer brand is linked to the attraction between students and organizations. Sense-making theory is used to investigate how students use excursions as opportunities to learn more about company as a workplace.
The study is qualitative interview study with triangular approach. Ten semi-structured interviews with computer science students and four with company representatives were conducted to find out how these two parties see excursions. Interviews were complemented with observations from excursions. Data was then analyzed by thematic analyzing methods.
Study findings show that students use excursions as opportunities to make sense of the organization as a potential workplace. Talking with employees was thought to be the most important way to get to know how the company really is and what kind of workers it wants to hire. The perceived fit between a student and the employees of the company strongly influenced the attraction that the student felt towards the company, which implies that employees are in crucial position when creating employer brand. Employer image was one of the main reasons why students decide to attend excursions, but excursions can be used to enhance the image as well by offering positive experiences during excursion. There were some difference in how students and companies saw excursions as a part of recruitment process. For companies excursions were mainly familiarity-building instances, whereas students used excursions to find out whether or not they would like to work in the company.