The entrepreneur, the trailblazer and the cosmopolitan promoting the ideal worker through employee testimonials

It is a common practice among employers to publish employee testimonials on their websites. They are intended to attract and regulate employees by expressing organizational objectives and setting cultural standards for employee behaviour. As such, organisations systematically defuse a profile of what they deem their ‘ideal worker’. This study entails a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a sample of employee testimonials (N:181) published by a organisations (N:37) from four employment sectors (finance, tech, energy and government). In this way, it is explored which cultural repertoires organizations draw upon to regulate the identities of their (future) employees. Eventually, three ideal types of workers are distinguished: ‘the entrepreneur’, with an emphasis on risk-taking, hard work and passion, ‘the trailblazer’, focused on innovation and changing the world, and, ‘the cosmopolitan’, who fully embraces the globalized work environment. Significant variations exist in sectorial popularity of each ideal worker.