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Mind the ad: How personality requirements affect older and younger job seekers' job attraction

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: Age discrimination may explain lower labour market chances of older and younger job seekers. What remains underresearched, however, is how older/younger job seekers might self‐select out from early recruitment procedures due to stigmatizing information in job ads. Building on theories of metastereotypes and the linguistic category model, two experimental studies investigated how personality requirements that older/younger job seekers hold negative metastereotypes about and the way in which these requirements are worded (behavioural vs. dispositional) affected their job attraction. Within‐participant mediation analyses showed that as expected, job attraction was higher for older ( N = 123, aged 50 years or more) and younger ( N = 151, 30 years or less) job seekers when requirements were worded in a behavioural way (e.g., ‘You can be flexible’), compared with a dispositional way (e.g., ‘You are flexible’). This relation was mediated by perceptions of challenge among younger but not older job seekers. Contrary to expectations, perceptions of threat did not explain the effects of negatively metastereotyped personality requirements on job attraction. Understanding how job seekers perceive information in job ads might help recruiters to design age‐sensitive recruitment policies.

Source: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

DOI: 10.1111/joop.12396

Authors: Aylin Koçak, Claudia Rooman, Wouter Duyck, Eva Derous

Institution: Ghent University

Language: English

Topic: Retirement, Disability, and Employment

Subfield: Demography

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: Universiteit Gent, Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds UGent