International Employer Branding

In her doctoral thesis, Dipl. Kulturwirtin Lena Christiaans (née Steinberg) investigates the topic of employer branding and employer attractiveness from an international perspective.

The increasing globalization of business activities forces companies to recruit highly skilled employees in countries all over the world. At the same time, demographic and social factors continuously reduce the supply of qualified talents. Driven by the continuously more heated global ‘war for talent’, companies have to develop international employer branding strategies as a key means of attracting their diverse target groups and differentiating themselves from the global competition. Just like marketing managers have to handle the worldwide differences in consumers’ values and attitudes as well as the subsequent behavioral patterns of human interaction, employer brand managers have to develop an understanding of what drives the employer choice of potential employees in different markets and which similarities might exist.

Therefore, it is important to analyze which employer characteristics contribute to employer attractiveness and employer choice of diverse target groups and to investigate the degree in which preferences are influenced by nationality. The main purpose of the research project is to investigate if the importance of given employer characteristics varies across countries. The degree of country influence on students’ valuation of employer characteristics may then determine possible degrees of standardization or adaption of employer branding strategies.

In order to further examine the potential for standardization, the project also takes a closer look at a possible segmentation of the European graduate market on the basis of students’ preferences for employer characteristics. To analyze the assumptions, a data set from a graduate survey in 24 European countries will be used to perform quantitative analyses.  In the end, the research results will contribute to the scientific foundation of the emerging topic of international employer branding and will be valuable for employer brand managers in international companies.