Experimental Design Details
This study explores the evolving landscape of skill-based hiring in the contemporary job market, addressing the disconnect between employers' perceptions of college degrees and the actual skills required for various roles. Recent discussions have highlighted a growing emphasis on skill-based hiring, focusing on the direct alignment of job applicants' skills with job requirements. This shift raises critical questions about the effectiveness and biases inherent in current hiring practices.
The research will investigate whether firms are actively engaging in skill-based hiring and their likelihood of employing individuals who have acquired skills through alternative routes (STARs), such as on-the-job experience, bootcamps, or micro-credentials, rather than traditional college education. The design is an audit study focusing on software engineering and digital marketing occupations. The study will be structured around several questions:
(1) It will examine whether the callback rate for job applicants varies based on the holding of a college degree, despite similar on-the-job experience, and will consider the field of experience/major and its relevance to the job.
(2) The study will evaluate the efficacy of STARs in signaling their skills through specific means, such as bootcamps, micro-credentials, and showcasing work on platforms like GitHub.
(3) It will explore whether firms are more inclined to hire STARs if they have previously been employed by high-status firms.
(4) The study will analyze the impact of "Tear the Paper Ceiling" initiatives on hiring practices, particularly focusing on whether adherence to these initiatives by firms or states influences the hiring of STARs.
(5) It will also consider how these effects vary with respect to applicants' race and gender, offering insights into potential biases in skill-based hiring.
Fictitious applicants will be of similar age. Those with college degree will have either around 2 years of experience or around 1 year + internship. Those without college degrees will have either 2 years of very relevant experience + 3 years of other work experience or 4 relevant experience +2 other working experience.
The research team will send job applications to open job positions that require 2-4 years of experience in the relevant field. The applications will be similar in all but the randomly assigned treatment dimensions:
(1) college degree or not
(1a) conditional on having college the relevance of the major
(1b) conditional on not having college listing a micro-credential, BootCamp, GitHub link
(2) Years of relevant and overall experience
(4) Reputation/status of last employer
(5) Race: Black and White
(6) Gender
Characteristics will be independently randomly assigned to a job applicant with equal (50%) probability. Race is indicated via the name of the applicant.
Standard templates for resumes contain the following information: name, contact information, education, work history, skills, and additional information such as credentials, relevant links, or projects. The constructed resumes follow the same structure while varying the treatments of the study.
Each resume lists a phone number and an email address in which callbacks will be received. An email address was set up for each name in each Combined Statistical Area (CSA). Two phone numbers were set for each CSA. A standard voicemail was set up in each of the phone lines prompting callers to leave a message for the applicant. Some job applications require to state an address. For those cases, four fictitious addresses in large apartment complexes in middle-income areas in each CSA were generated. These addresses were randomly assigned to resumes.
High schools and public colleges are selected using the Common Core Data. In particular, for high schools, 8 non-charter or magnet schools per CSA are selected for which the confidence interval of socioeconomic status contains the 75 percentile of socioeconomic status within the CSA.
A small team of research assistants (4) will help apply for jobs and record applications. Each research assistant will be assigned one CSA and instructed to search for daily eligible jobs using the ONET classifications as keyword searches. Research assistants will not apply to jobs from staffing companies, that are paid via commission, or that have been posted more than 30 days prior. Emails will be set up per name per CSA so that each research assistant can oversee their own applications.
Data on the job application will be collected: job text, degree requirement statements, date posted, application date, sent resume, employer characteristics, and whether the employer contacted the applicant.