The Impact of Information Quality of Job Descriptions on an Applicant's Decision to Pursue a Job

Abstract

Job descriptions are one of the major mechanisms that organizations use to convey job and company information to job applicants. Consequently, job descriptions play a major role in the recruitment process to attract job candidates. However, it is unclear whether the quality of a job description influences a job applicant’s decision making. It is in the organizations’ interest to understand this phenomenon to make better decisions on how to present job descriptions in order to achieve qualified applicants and a desirable applicant pool size.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the impact of the quality of information of job descriptions on a job applicant’s decision to pursue a job. A model is developed to quantify job descriptions. The developed model contains three axes: i) x-axis – job description components, ii) y-axis – information quality dimensions, and iii) z-axis – job industries. This investigation analyzed 127 job descriptions for students majoring in accounting at the University of Waterloo to determine the relationship between the qualities of different components of the job descriptions with the corresponding number of applications.

The results of this investigation suggest that information quality has a positive impact on job applicants’ decision to pursue a job. In addition, information quality has different magnitudes of impact for jobs that have similar organization reputation or geographic location. Future research is recommended to analyze other information quality dimensions by using a similar experimental approach as the one used in this thesis.