In this book, Alison E Barber delineates three separate stages of recruitment - generating applicants, maintaining applicant status and influencing job choice - and discusses existing knowledge and important unanswered questions relevant to each of these stages. She also addresses the questions of whether and how recruitment influences organizational outcomes.

Traditional recruitment topics such as recruitment source effects and reactions to initial interviews are covered in detail, while alternative approaches to recruitment research, requiring different theoretical frameworks and different research methods, are also proposed.