Job crafting is a beneficial job quality where employees proactively shape their job to better align with their personal or work-related goals. Employees who engage in job crafting tend to have higher motivation, work-engagement, creativity, and overall wellbeing. However, despite the potential benefits, many organizations have yet to incorporate job crafting opportunities into their marketing and recruiting materials to attract potential employees.
THE RESEARCH STUDIES
The researchers (Schüler et al., 2023) set out to determine if advertising job crafting opportunities is an effective way to attract new talent. In their first study, the researchers recruited 96 participants who were all actively seeking jobs. These participants were asked to rank the attractiveness of profiles with different degrees of job crafting opportunities. Results indicated that job crafting opportunities increased the attractiveness of the job across all participants, but even more so for those with proactive personalities.
In the second study of 669 participants, the researchers used vignettes to identify situations that affected the relationship between job crafting opportunities and an applicant accepting the job. While job crafting opportunities alone did not necessarily increase the likelihood of accepting the job, the additional expectation of being treated well on the job or the opportunity for self-expression on the job did increase the likelihood of acceptance. In a similar vein, if the applicant expected a great amount of stress in the new job, they were less likely to accept, even when job crafting opportunities were advertised.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
The authors provide several practical steps for organizations looking to attract new talent using job crafting opportunities:
- Create job ads that highlight job crafting opportunities, but only when the opportunity is serious. In other words, don’t try to trick applicants.
- Utilize realistic job previews or honest employee testimonials to allow job applicants a peek into the reality of the opportunity.
- Establish clear support systems and boundaries to jobs – even when offering job crafting opportunities. This will ensure that applicants or new hires do not experience unnecessary stress.
Schüler, J., Franzke, S., Boehnlein, P., & Baum, M. (2023). Do job crafting opportunities help to win talent? Disentangling and contextualizing the effects of job crafting opportunities on applicant attraction. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 44, 776-801.
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