Abstract:

Even in the digital age, employees, especially executives, play a decisive role in the success of a company. They are not only operationally responsible for the economic results of the business, but they are also of central importance for the cultural management of the company (Turker 2009a; Jones 2010, Ansoff 1965). In the "war for talent" (Chambers 1998), highly talented potential managers are therefore intensively targeted. However, detailed qualitative research on the communication expectations of these high potentials has yet to be conducted (Voegtlin & Greenwood 2016).

The paper is in the context of a current international doctoral project conducted in the "Health, Science, Communication and Management (HSCM)" program at Klagenfurt University. The research presented here looks for the first time in qualitative form at the communication expectations of young, aspiring managers, as well as the expectation-expectations of human resources communicators on the corporate side. In the course of this mixed-methods study, two main approaches were chosen: On the one hand, the web communications of top management traineeships of international media companies were subjected to a content audit on a technical, content-related and web-strategic (SEO/SEA) level. On the other hand, HR managers of the companies (as senders) and prospective executives (as receivers) were asked in qualitative in-depth interviews about their communicative expectations in the recruiting process. In particular, prospective executives, as successful applicants for trainee positions, contribute a particularly valuable perspective here. The paper presents results from thirty in-depth interviews that allow an initial qualitative reflection on the communication expectations of high potentials from both an employer and a societal perspective. Both current thematic communication trends (social responsibility, equality, sustainability) and the communication requirements of ambitious and highly competent companies become clear. The paper thus responds to current research calls from communication science on recruiting communication of and with high potentials (DeRoeck et al. 2014, Zhang et al. 2020).

Keywords:

CSR, Media, Recruiting, HighPotentials, HRM, EnvironmentalCSR, SEO, Hiring.