In this chapter, brief introduction of the research is presented. In the beginning, background of the study is discussed, and followed by problem statement, research purpose, research questions, and scope of the study as well. At last, definitions of key terms in the study are introduced in the end of the chapter.
Background of the Study
According to the survey from job bank of Taiwan in 2011, 15% of the fresh graduates left their first jobs within three months (Li, 2011). Another statistical survey conducted by manpower bank in August of 2016 even showed that 61.8% of fresh graduates and those who finished military service did not have a job (Yes123 Job Bank, 2016); along with the statistical result indicated that 20.7% of the working fresh graduates had intentions to leave their current jobs within the first half year. As for the United States, one survey reveals that 42% of employees born between 1980 and 2000, who were so-called Millennials or Generation Y, changed the job every one to three years (Chen, 2016). From the information shown by the government as well as the man power banks in Taiwan and the United States, problems of high turnover and transfer rate in job market still exist, especially within the young generations. As a result, it should be an important issue for employer to consider that an objective of recruiting is not to hire lots of new employees, but to recruit suitable people into the organization. In other words, the best way of recruiting is finding the right person to match the job vacancy in order to lower the turnover rate afterward.
According to Barber (1998), there are three stages of recruitment, including generating applicants, maintaining applicants’ interest, and influencing applicants’ job choice decision.
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From the proposed theory, it is believed that companies attractive to job applicants are able to conduct recruitment more successfully, and organizational attractiveness is one of the main factors that affects individuals’ decision on pursuing the certain job. One way recruiters can adopt to attract job applicants is to providing job preview for them because it addresses job applicants’ most highly valued work needs in the organization (Gaugler & Thornton III, 1990).
Job preview is usually given before a job offer has been made and should allow prospective employees to make decisions whether they are going to continue the application process (Larson & Hewitt, 2005). Many previous studies had suggested that traditional job preview (TJP), which only provides job applicants with positive aspects of a job (Wanous, 1973), would be more attractive to job applicants because it only reveals positive aspects of the future job instead of negative information that tends to reduce organizational attraction to job applicants (Bretz & Judge, 1998). Nevertheless, individuals may face “reality shock” once they enter the organization without enough accurate information and have unrealistically high expectations;
consequently, as they experience reality shock, they would be more likely to feel unsatisfied with the job which leads to turnover (Miceli, 1985).
As the phenomena of high job transfer rate among young generations, it is needed for companies to find out a solution to recruit employees and prevent the situations of new hires’
quitting from the position. As previous researchers implied (Wanous, 1973; Premack &
Wanous, 1985; Meglino, DeNisi, Youngblood, & Williams, 1988), realistic job preview (RJP) is an effective recruiting technique to lower employees’ turnover rate and increase their job survival rate. The meta-analytic research conducted by Meglino, Ravlin, and DeNisi (2001) concluded that RJP affects the subsequent turnover because it provides job applicants a better insight of a certain position and it enables them to self-select out of the job because individuals are able to make decisions based on accurate information they receive from an RJP. Also, it was found that if a person received an RJP before entering an organization, it was believed that
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it could help increase his or her perception of role clarity in that position (Saks & Cronshaw, 1990), which might subsequently influence later job performance, satisfaction, and survival rate.
In order to reduce young generations’ transfer rate and turnover in Taiwan, what companies need to concern now is how to prevent the situation in advance. From the information and literature above, it is obviously better for individuals to encounter “reality shock” before they enter the organization instead of experiencing it afterwards with increasing role clarity in the job. In other words, even though RJPs may decrease job acceptance rate among job applicants, it optimizes the function of self-selection when individuals are looking for a job as they face unmet expectations earlier during the recruitment process other than experiencing them after being hired, and understand themselves better through the information provided from the preview during the recruitment phase.
Problem Statement
According to statistical survey from manpower bank, high turnover rate among fresh graduates has been a problem for years. From one survey conducted in 2010 by a manpower bank in Taiwan, 45.4% of fresh graduates left their job within three months and 20.7% of this group of people resigned from their job because work content was different from their interests (104 Job Bank, 2010). Furthermore, for fresh graduates still staying on the job, over 70% of them had intention to quit his or her job and 30.3% indicated that there was a gap between reality and initial expectation. Even though there are still some other reasons leading to the current phenomena such as fresh graduates’ mental stability and social experiences, undoubtedly unmet expectation is one of the crucial factors affecting employees’ turnover.
In regard to unmet expectation, previous study have convey that mechanism of self-selection from RJPs resulted in lower job acceptance intention than TJPs as job seekers have
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been exposed to unmet expectation before they are recruited (Saks, Wiesner, & Sumers, 1994).
Although a company may be successful during the recruiting stage, problems of turnover may emerge after a period of time since employees may experience the expectation gap after they enter the organization. As a result, it is concerned whether an individual is able to clarify the role of the job and avoid drop out from the organization due to high unmet expectation after they are hired.
Research Purpose
The present study aims to investigate the differences between the so called “Realistic Job Preview (RJP)” and Traditional Job Preview (TJP) on individuals’ perception of role clarity and unmet expectation. As previous survey implied that unmet expectation on the job is one of the reasons which results in high turnover rate among fresh graduates in Taiwan (104 Job Bank, 2010), the researcher would like to examine whether RJPs enable job applicants to experience unmet expectations better than those who are exposed to TJPs during the recruiting phase in order to reduce the problem of turnover afterwards. Furthermore, individuals’ understanding of role clarity is another issue the current study would like to investigate since it is also an important factor affecting individuals’ later performance on the job. As a result, the main purposes of the present study are to compare the effectiveness of RJPs and TJPs on individuals’
perception of unmet expectation and role clarity.
Research Questions
Based on the problems stated and the purposes proposed by the researcher in the present study, the research questions are further proposed as following:
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1. Does job preview effectively lead individuals to experience unmet expectation before entering an organization?
2. Does job preview effectively lead individuals to increase perception of role clarity before entering an organization?
3. Does realistic job preview (RJP) lead individuals to experience more unmet expectations than traditional job preview (TJP)?
4. Does realistic job preview (RJP) lead individuals to understand the role on a job than traditional job preview (TJP)?
Scope of the Study
As the present research aims to examine the issue of job market in Taiwan, the sample population targets either students who are going to enter job market or people with a few years of working experiences. Due to limited accessibility, the current study only investigates the individuals’ perception of role clarity and the relationship between job previews, and unmet expectation by an experimental design. The issues related to the post-hire phase, such as turnover which individuals encounter after they are hired, is not included in this study. As for the data collection, the researcher distributed the questionnaire through online methods, and the researcher collected 298 valid responses. Because the research was conducted through an experimental approach, there were pre-test and post-test of questionnaire for participants in order to examine the differential effect of job previews.
Definition of Key Terms Realistic Job Preview
Realistic job preview (RJP) is defined as a technique for recruiters to provide job
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applicants with an accurate image of the certain position which allows applicants to make decision of whether to accept the position depending on the job information they receive (Larson & Hewitt, 2005). An RJP includes both positive and negative information of a job and because of this kind of characteristic, an RJP lead those job applicants to self-select into or out of the organization. In the present study, RJP was presented through an edited job preview video for participants which illustrated the detail information of the job to which they were exposed and it included both positive and negative aspects of the position.
Traditional Job Preview
Traditional job preview (TJP) is defined as unrealistic job previews since they mainly present positive aspects of a job (Wanous, 1973). Besides, TJP is also defined as “favorable job preview (Reilly, Tenopyr, & Sperling, 1979),” or “enhancement job preview” which is designed to dispel applicants’ negative impressions of the job (Meglino, DeNisi, Youngblood, &
Williams, 1988). In the present study, TJP was presented through an edited job preview video for participants which illustrated the detail information of the job to which they are exposed.
TJP presented in the present study only revealed positive information of the job.
Unmet Expectation
Unmet expectation refers to the differences between initial expectations and actual experiences on the job (Ross & Zander, 1957; Katzell, 1968; Dunnette, Arvey, & Banas, 1973).
In the present study, unmet expectation is utilized by comparing the change of individuals’
perceptions of job attraction before and after reviewing a job preview video.
Role Clarity
Role clarity refers to the presence of adequate role-relevant information due to variations
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of the quality of the information. Also, role clarity could refer to an individual’s feeling of having much role-relevant information as the person would like to have (Lyons, 1971). In the present study, role clarity refers to individuals’ understanding of job role and responsibilities of marketing specialist in the provided job preview video.
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