Recruiting millennials: Exploring the impact of CSR involvement and pay signaling on organizational attractiveness

Abstract Modern organizations must consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its implications. CSR involvement carries many potential benefits, including opportunities to promote stakeholder engagement with the organization, particularly among young people (i.e., millennials) in the emergent workforce. Collectively, millennials are often described as both socially active and self‐centered. These seemingly antithetical motives complicate the execution of optimal recruitment practice. This empirical study examined the impact of CSR activity and relative pay level signals on organizational attractiveness. Participants who were seeking or soon to be seeking employment in the United States responded to a hypothetical company profile. Confirming expectations, results revealed an effect of CSR information on organizational attractiveness, wherein notification of CSR involvement enhanced attractiveness. Pay level and CSR notification did not significantly interact, indicating that the effects of CSR on attractiveness are not moderated by information about pay levels. The implications of the results and future research recommendations are discussed.