Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
RCT within the tech firm:
Our third outcome variable is the fit of the application to the advertised position (in particular, does the educational background and previous job experience fit to the advertised position).
Our fourth outcome variable is the quality of the applicant / application. Here, we use various measures. First, the classification of the quality of the application by the firm’s recruiters. Second, whether all required documents are submitted, whether there are typos in the application, etc.. Third, the grades of the applicant at university, and whether the university is one of the top universities in the respective field in Germany. Fourth, the quality of job market experience of the applicant (e.g. prestige of the current employer, prestige of the internships). To measure the quality of the application, we will potentially also run expert interviews among HR managers in which HR manager are asked to rate the quality of the applications.
Our fifth type of outcome variables are the commuting time to the current employer and our study firm’s plant as well as the cities of residence of the applicants.
Our sixth type of outcome variables are measures regarding the success of the applicants in the hiring process. First, we want to check how far applicants get in the hiring process (e.g. invited for an interview). Second, we want to analyse which candidates eventually get the job.
Note that we are also planning to interact the different outcome variables in order to explore heterogenous treatment effects, e.g. to study the interaction of gender and commuting time.
Survey experiment:
We are also interested on interaction of the various outcome variables, e.g. whether peoples’ expectation about the job and their interests to apply interact. With respect to heterogeneous treatment effects, we will also study how people’s interest to apply depends on gender, their preferences for certain job characteristics, ability beliefs, their risk preferences, competitiveness preferences, patience and trust/reciprocity.