New ventures fighting the war for talents: the impact of product innovativeness and entrepreneurs’ passion on applicant attraction

An unanswered question in studies on recruiting in new ventures is how entrepreneurs can persuasively communicate to job seekers information about their ventures' unique features to attract applicants. By building on nonverbal communication research, we investigate how verbally communicated product innovativeness and entrepreneurs' nonverbal displays of passion affect applicant attraction both separately and in combination. We find applicant attraction is positively related to both communicated product innovativeness and entrepreneurs' displays of moderate passion and negatively related to excessive displays of passion. Moreover, our findings suggest that displays of high passion distract job seekers from processing the semantic content of recruitment messages. Plain English Summary In the war for talent, entrepreneurs interacting with job seekers should display passion but not excessively, especially when their venture's products/services are highly innovative. To help new ventures overcome the severe recruiting challenges they typically face, we study how entrepreneurs can use verbal and nonverbal communication to persuasively communicate their ventures' unique features to job seekers to enlarge their applicant pools. We asked a sample of individuals on the job market to watch videos of entrepreneurs presenting their ventures' products/services and evaluate these ventures' attractiveness as employers. These evaluations indicate that new ventures are considered more attractive employers when entrepreneurs communicate the innovativeness of ventures' products/services and display moderate passion. Thus, the main implication of this study is that entrepreneurs looking for applicants should convey information about the novelty of their ventures' products/services and display passion when interacting with job seekers while avoiding excessive outwardly manifestations of passion.