The Effect of Compensation and Benefits Information Specificity on Intention to Apply for a Job: Conscientiousness as Moderator

Abstract

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The question of whether providing specific information about the reward package in job advertisements remains unanswered to organizational recruiters. Therefore, the study applied signaling theory to examine the influence of compensation and benefits information specificity on applicants’ intention to apply. Moreover, responding the call of further research on individual differences in interpreting information, the second objective was to study the moderating role of conscientiousness and see whether high conscientious individuals are more likely to apply for the job after seeing specific compensation and benefits information. To achieve the research objectives, the study used an experimental design and collected data from 325 Vietnamese job seekers. The data was then processed by the IBM SPSS and Mplus software to run exploratory factors analysis, confirmatory factors analysis, and other necessary analyses to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that specific compensation and benefits (C&B) information could significantly increase job seekers’ intention to apply for the job. Conscientiousness was found to significantly moderate the positive impact of specific C&B information on intention to apply. Overall, the findings provided practical suggestions to companies and human resources practitioners with a view to captivating more applicants by effectively design job posting.