A short large-scale intervention for vocational students to improve transitions to jobs (Avenir Pro)

The intervention is a counseling program which takes place at the class level. The program consists of three sessions of around two hours each (6 hours overall).

The first session – labeled as “Taking stock of my skills” -- has the objective to help participants to identify their skills and how to signal them to potential employers. The second session – labeled as “Organize my job search effectively” – aims at teaching participants how to identify job offers and companies recruiting in their profession, sector, and region. Finally, the third session – labeled as “Convincing in job interviews” – prepares participants for job interviews, in particular by working on the topics of professional attitudes and self-confidence.

The treatment takes place from January 2024 to May 2024.

2024-01-14

2024-05-31

(1) Employment probability; (2) Earnings; (3) Enrollment in (higher) education.

We rely on administrative registers which provide rich information about all students of vocational schools and their situation after school. They contain information about employment in public and private sectors, earnings, participation in training programs and enrollment in the educational system.

Based on these administrative data, we observe for every individual in our sample the employment status after exiting vocational school, with or without a diploma. Depending on the availability of sources, due to confidentiality issues, individuals can be tracked, without limitation in time, either every 6 months or on a daily basis. We will estimate the probability of being employed at time t after leaving the vocational school. Besides the employment state at a specific point in time, we will also be able to observe the earnings of employed individuals. This allows us to construct yearly earnings for each individual in our experiment and we will be able to estimate the impact of the intervention on earnings in a specific year as well as on accumulated earnings over several years.

We will use the administrative data on the enrollment in the educational system to measure the impact of the interventions on the probability of entering educational tracks which lead to a higher educational degree or to another educational degree of similar level. We will additionally be able to observe whether they finish these educational programs.

We will explore the heterogeneity of the impact of the interventions with respect to the situation on the local labor market. For this we will use regional data on sector- and occupation-specific unemployment rates as well as information on the employment rates of previous cohorts of vocational students who graduated in the same vocational schools.

We will additionally explore effect heterogeneity with respect to students’ personality traits (Big Five and Locus of Control). We conduct a survey in all participating schools. The first wave of this survey takes place from November 2023 to mid January 2024, i.e., before the treatment starts. In this survey we measure the locus of control based on 8 items and the Big Five based on 30 items.

Moreover, in this survey we observe students’ subjective expectations about employment outcomes, their knowledge about employment prospects of similar students, and students’ subjective evaluation of their preparation for the labor market. We will also explore effect heterogeneity along these dimensions.

(1) expected employment outcomes; (2) knowledge about employment prospects of similar students; (3) subjective evaluation of their preparation for the labor market.

We will conduct a survey in all participating schools. The first wave of this survey takes place from November 2023 to mid January 2024, i.e., before the treatment starts. The second wave is planned for May 2024, i.e., after the treatment. In both waves we ask several questions about students’ plans for the next year and expected employment outcomes.

The questions about expected employment outcomes include the expected probability of finding a job within (i) 6 and (ii) 12 months (conditional on searching for a job), the (iii) expected wage in the first job, and (iv) the probability that the first job will be interesting and that the students will like the job, and (v) whether they expect that this job will be a job with a fixed-term contract, a job with an open-ended contract, or a free-lancer job.

To measure the knowledge about employment prospects of similar students, we ask about the share of students who find a job within 6 months among those who obtain the same diploma and who decide to look for a job without continuing their studies. We will compare the answers of the students with the actual shares of students who find a job within 6 months. This comparison will allow us to measure the accuracy of students’ beliefs about employment prospects of similar students.

The survey additionally contains several questions to measure the subjective evaluation of the students’ preparation for the labor market. The students are asked to what extent they agree with the following statements: (i) I know how to find job offers that match my profile and where I'm likely to be hired; (ii) I feel ready for job interviews; (iii) to find a good job, you need to be mobile and look in different regions, sectors and professions; (iv) if I'm looking for a job next year, I can count on my family and people I know to find a job; (v) I already have contacts with employers and companies that I can contact directly when I’m looking for a job. We will consider these items separately and we will construct a joint index based on all items.

We will explore the heterogeneity of the impact of the interventions with respect to the situation on the local labor market. For this we will use regional data on sector- and occupation-specific unemployment rates as well as information on the employment rates of previous cohorts of vocational students who graduated in the same vocational schools.

We will additionally explore effect heterogeneity with respect to students’ personality traits (Big Five and Locus of Control). In the survey we measure the locus of control based on 8 items and the Big Five based on 30 items.

We have around 1200 public vocational schools in continental France entering our experiment. The group of treated schools will consist of about 600 schools. The treatment in the schools will be delivered by counselors who closely cooperate with the public employment service (Pôle Emploi).

Our starting point for the randomization are the 96 local units (‘départements’) in continental France. For each school in the experiment, we observe the average share of students which have been employed 6 months after finishing the school in the previous years. Within each département, we sort schools by the average employment rates of the graduates of previous cohorts and we build pairs of schools with similar employment rates. Within each pair, we randomly select one school to be treated.

Students choose during the final year whether they want to prepare themselves for entering the labor market (professional track) or whether they want to go on with their studies (higher education track). Our intervention is designed for the first group of students (professional track). If possible, we will collect pre- and post-treatment information about the type of track the students have chosen.

Not available

The randomization is done by the research team with the help of a computer program.

At the school level

Yes

1200 schools

120,000

600 treated and 600 non-treated schools, with around 60,000 students in the treated schools and around 60,000 students in the control schools.

For the power calculation, we assume that we can observe for every class which student is enrolling in the professional track, and we assume that the share of students being enrolled in this track is 50%. The power calculations do not consider that the randomization is stratified based on the employment rate at the school. The MDE for the employment rate corresponds to 2.12 percentage points (assuming an average employment rate of 50% and an intraclass correlation of 0.05).