Title: Attractiveness of firms with chatbot as job interviewers: does the interviewer-type matter in the first contact with candidates?

Authors: Helena Řepová; Jan Zouhar; Pavel Král

Addresses: Department of Management, Prague University of Economics and Business, Jarosovska 1117/II, 377-01 Jindrichuv Hradec, Czech Republic ' Department of Econometrics, Prague University of Economics and Business, W. Churchill Sq. 1938/4, 130-67 Prague 3 – Žižkov, Czech Republic ' Department of Social Sciences, Prague University of Economics and Business, Jarosovska 1117/II, 377-01 Jindrichuv Hradec, Czech Republic

Abstract: Chatbot-mediated job interviews raise questions about applicant perception of justice, which in turn affects organisational attractiveness. This study uses experimental data to assess applicants' perceptions of procedural, interactional, and interpersonal justice, and their relationship to organisational attractiveness in three scenarios: chatbot, human and unspecified interviewer. The research aims to differentiate the fairness perception effect between robots and human interviewers using an identical written job interview preselection procedure. The results show that the perception of justice significantly impacts organisational attractiveness. Organisations that comply with rules of procedural and interactional justice can implement chatbots without compromising organisational attractiveness. Although the results are mixed, we do not find evidence to suggest that revealing information about chatbots endangers the organisation's attractiveness relative to that of the human recruiter. Younger candidates with previous experience in chatbot interviews even preferred a chatbot to a human recruiter.

Keywords: chatbot; recruitment; organisational attractiveness; perception of fairness; age; chatbot experience; the nature of chatbot.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2024.141672

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2024 Vol.30 No.6, pp.711 - 732

Received: 14 Aug 2023
Accepted: 29 Sep 2023
Published online: 30 Sep 2024 *

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