What is signaling and what role does it play during recruiting?

What will be an ideal response?

Because people often have limited information about organizations and jobs, in the absence of objective information, they may rely on traits of the recruiter and the recruiter's behaviors as signals of aspects of both the company and the job opportunity. Recruitment experiences, including perceived recruiter competence, recruitment delays, and the gender composition of interview panels, are interpreted by applicants as symbolic of broader organizational characteristics and can negatively influence job offer acceptance decisions. Applicants may form negative impressions of the organization if a poor recruiter is considered representative of the organization as a whole.

The choice of the person sent to recruit can be taken as a signal of the importance of the job, with higher-level recruiters, the actual hiring manager, and the CEO being considered reflective of more important jobs than staff recruiters. The recruiter may also be a signal of demographic diversity in the organization if the recruiter is a demographic minority. Because recruiter behaviors affect applicant attraction indirectly through influencing applicant perceptions of job and organizational attributes, it seems likely that recruits infer characteristics about the organization from their experiences with the organization's recruiters. The fact that recruits are more put off by poor recruiter behavior when the recruiter is a hiring manager rather than a human resource representative suggests that recruits may make stronger generalizations about the job and organization from experiences with people in the organization who are closely linked to that job, such as the hiring manager. This further emphasizes the point that as recruiters, hiring managers can have a large impact on the success of a staffing effort.