How do small organizations manage their attributes in favor of talent attraction? A Resource-Based Configurational Perspective.

Given their challenges in attracting qualified workforce, small organizations must leverage their organizational attributes effectively. While existing literature has primarily examined organizational attributes' perceived attractiveness from applicants' perspectives, we adopt an employer-centric, resource-based configurational approach to understand how small firms combine their strengths and weaknesses to attract required qualified workforce. Drawing on a sample of 819 French small businesses (10-50 employees) surveyed and employing fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identified four distinct yet internally consistent attribute configurations achieving comparable levels of talent attraction. Our findings reveal that the presence of certain attributes can effectively compensate for the absence of others. These results demonstrate how resource-constrained organizations can develop competitive advantage in the labor market through strategic attribute combinations.