Employer branding for SMEs: Attracting graduating students in IT industry

Employer Branding has been an emerging topic in HRM for less than two decades. The concept of Employer Branding is a popular recruitment strategy used by large companies or MNCs. However, researches on the effectiveness of Employer Brand-ing for SMEs are very limited. Thus, this research aims to study the role of Employer Branding in SMEs, especially IT SMEs in Finland. This research focused on the perspectives of graduating students, the prospective employees of SMEs, as the main research targets. The theoretical framework is developed using concepts of Marketing (Lievens and Highhouse (2003)) and Strategic HRM (Barney 1991) and how they are connected within Employer Branding. Quantitative survey is utilised and 181 good responses were collected. The empirical findings suggest that employer branding has positive influence on students' decision to apply for a job in SMEs but on the contrary, the correlation between instrumental and symbolic values of the employer branding to the attitude of the prospective student employees is weak. The study suggests that although Employer Branding is a widely used approach to attract prospective employees by large companies, this concept may not be as effective if applied by the SMEs in the Finnish IT industry

Constructivism theory based learninga total quality approach /

Constructivism theory is starting to gain substantial momentum in education process as a base for improving the learning environments and enhancing the learning outcomes. As the focus in constructivism theory based learning is shifted toward the learners, and the learners are expected to play an active role in the learning process, the issue of quality and consistency began to surface due to the absence of a clear quality process that can effectively check and control the learning outcomes. This as a result contributes negatively to the academic environment and learning processes. The Total Quality Management (TQM) model and management techniques have been long adopted and widely used by the business and commercial community. As TQM principles are adopted by facilitators and educators, it was discovered that there is a natural fit for quality principles and practices with their own aspirations for the continuous improvement of education. This developmental project aims to present a model which could be used to support any constructivism theory based learning sessions with an objective to improve the quality of learning outcome. The main goal of this paper is to establish a total quality model for a constructivism theory based learning session. The main aims of the model are to ensure both quality in process and content of the session. The model covers ‘end to end’ of a learning process that is built primarily based on Constructivism theory