Brian W. Swider

Employee Job Search Toward an Understanding of Search Context and Search Objectives

Job search behaviors occur across various contexts, involving diverse populations of job seekers searching for employment opportunities. In particular, individuals may search for their first jobs following a period of education, may seek reemployment following job loss, or may search for new opportunities while currently employed. Research in each of these contexts has evolved somewhat separately, yet there is value to applying the ideas and findings from one search context to other search contexts. The purpose of this article is to review the prior research in each of the three job search contexts and offer an integrative analysis of the predictors, processes, consequences, and varying objectives of job search behavior across an individual’s potential employment situations (i.e., new entrant, job loser, employed job seeker). Implications for future research on job search behavior are discussed.

Initial Evaluations in the Interview: Relationships with Subsequent Interviewer Evaluations and Employment Offers.

The authors of this study examine how evaluations made during an early stage of the structured interview (rapport building) influence end of interview scores, subsequent follow-up employment interviews, and actual internship job offers. Candidates making better initial impressions received more internship offers (r = .22) and higher interviewer ratings (r = .42). As predicted, initial evaluations of candidate competence extend beyond liking and similarity to influence subsequent interview outcomes from the same interviewer (ΔR² = .05), from a separate interviewer (ΔR² = .05), and from another interviewer who skipped rapport building (ΔR² = .05). In contrast, assessments of candidate liking and similarity were not significantly related to other judgments when ratings were provided by different interviewers. The findings of this study thus indicate that initial impressions of candidates influence employment outcomes, and that they may be based on useful judgments of candidate competence that occur in the opening minutes of the structured interview.

Searching for the right fit: : Development of applicant person-organization fit perceptions during the recruitment process

Numerous studies link applicant fit perceptions measured at a single point in time to recruitment outcomes. Expanding upon this prior research by incorporating decision-making theory, this study examines how applicants develop these fit perceptions over the duration of the recruitment process, showing meaningful changes in fit perceptions across and within organizations overtime. To assess the development of applicant fit perceptions, eight assessments of person-organization (PO) fit with up to four different organizations across 169 applicants for 403 job choice decisions were analyzed. Results showed the presence of initial levels and changes in differentiation of applicant PO fit perceptions across organizations, which significantly predicted future job choice. In addition, changes in within-organizational PO fit perceptions across two stages of recruitment predicted applicant job choices among multiple employers. The implications of these results for accurately understanding the development of fit perceptions, relationships between fit perceptions and key recruiting outcomes, and possible limitations of past meta-analytically derived estimates of these relationships are discussed.

Who withdraws? Psychological individual differences and employee withdrawal behaviors

Psychological individual differences, such as personality, affectivity, and general mental ability, have been shown to predict numerous work-related behaviors. Although there is substantial research demonstrating relationships between psychological individual differences and withdrawal behaviors (i.e., lateness, absenteeism, and turnover), there is no integrative framework providing scholars and practitioners a guide for conceptualizing how, why, and under what circumstances we observe such relationships. In this integrative conceptual review we: (a) utilize the Cognitive-Affective Processing System framework (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) to provide an overarching theoretical basis for how psychological individual differences affect withdrawal behaviors; (b) create a theoretical model of the situated person that summarizes the existing empirical literature examining the effect of psychological differences on withdrawal behavior; and (c) identify future research opportunities based on our review and integrative framework.

Employees on the rebound: Extending the careers literature to include boomerang employment.

As employee careers have evolved from linear trajectories confined within 1 organization to more dynamic and boundaryless paths, organizations and individuals alike have increasingly considered reestablishing prior employment relationships. These “boomerang employees” follow career paths that feature 2 or more temporally separated tenures in particular organizations (“boomerang organizations”). Yet, research to date is mute on how or to what extent differences across boomerang employees’ career experiences, and the learning and knowledge developed at and away from boomerang organizations, meaningfully impact their performance following their return. Addressing this omission, we extend a careers-based learning perspective to construct a theoretical framework of a parsimonious, yet generalizable, set of factors that influence boomerang employee return performance. Results based on a sample of boomerang employees and employers in the same industry (professional basketball) indicate that intra- and extraorganizational knowledge construction and disruptions, as well as transition events, are significantly predictive of boomerangs’ return performance. Comparisons with 2 matched samples of nonboomerang employees likewise suggest distinctive patterns in the performance of boomerang employees.