In October, Professor David Jones and his colleagues were invited to present their research on recruitment practices to a NATO Task Force Group on Military Recruitment & Retention in Brussels, Belgium. Currently, many NATO countries in Europe are facing their first attempts at recruiting as they are transitioning from a conscript model to an all volunteer force. A NATO taskforce has been created to design effective recruitment strategies that can be used as a resource for NATO counties to use in crafting their own policies. Dr. Derek Chapman from the University of Calgary traveled to Belgium to present two studies conducted with Professor Jones and other co-authors.
One paper that was presented in Belgium was a meta-analysis of the recruitment literature that has been conditionally accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones, 2004). In this study, the authors combined the empirical results from all appropriate studies on recruitment to identify the most effective practices for affecting applicant attraction to organizations and other relevant outcomes (e.g., application decisions, job offer acceptance).
The second paper presented in Belgium was a theory of persuasive recruiting that Drs. Chapman and Jones have been developing over the last three years (Chapman & Jones, 2004). In their theoretical work, they discuss the effectiveness of particular recruitment strategies within the context of the research literature on persuasion and attitude change.
References:
Chapman, D. S., Uggerslev, K. L., Carroll, S. A., Piasentin, K. A., & Jones, D. A. (2004). Applicant attraction to organizations and job choice: A meta-analytic review of the correlates of recruiting outcomes. Presented at the 2003 18th annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL. Conditionally accepted for publication at the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Chapman, D. S., & Jones, D. A. (2004). A theory of persuasive recruiting. Presented at the 2002 62nd annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Denver, CO. Currently under review at Human Resource Management Review.