Pre-entry promissory signalling in digital recruitment: Evidence from LinkedIn job advertisements in global hotel brands

Addressing limited research on promissory digital recruitment communication, this study examines LinkedIn job advertisements as pre-entry promissory communication texts through which organisations communicate explicit and implicit employment promise signals. Drawing on a qualitative interpretive approach and reflexive thematic analysis, the study analyses 100 LinkedIn job advertisements from ten selected global hotel brands. The findings identify six recurring categories of employment promise signals: belonging and identity, growth and mobility, rewards and security, wellbeing, purpose and meaning, and prestige and work environment. These signals are communicated through distinct discursive framing strategies and are theoretically organised into six implied employment-relationship expectation domains. The study proposes the Digital Recruitment Promise–Expectation Signalling Model (DR-PESM), a bounded, empirically grounded conceptual model integrating identified promise signals and discursive framing with theoretically proposed applicant interpretation and implied expectation domains. The study contributes to signalling theory, psychological contract scholarship, and digital recruitment communication by showing how LinkedIn job advertisements can make employment-relationship meanings communicatively available before organisational entry and guides future applicant-focused research.