Attracting Talented Employees to the Company: Do We Need Different Employer Branding Strategies in Different Cultures?

Attracting and retaining highly talented employees and to consolidate competitive advantage is an important issue for companies in all scales around the world. Understanding what attracts talented recruits to a company may provide important insights for human resources managers. Yet, there is another important question in today's globalised business world: can we use standardized strategies to attract potential employees all around the world, or shall we customize our employer brand according to the cultural differences between the countries. This paper aims to identify perceptual differences concerning the importance levels of different dimensions of employer attractiveness in two different cultures. In doing so, we conducted a quantitative research among 300 university students studying in Latvia and Turkey. Our results suggest that respondents in Turkey attribute a higher importance to attractiveness of employers compared to Latvian respondents. National and cultural difference and gender are also investigated as they offer possibilities for human resources managers to understand theoretical foundations of employer brand and its application in practice. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.