Selection, Sorting and Discrimination in Labor Supply Decisions

We run a Facebook advertisement to gauge the interest of candidates seeking positions as field surveyors, requiring them to complete an online form. We call up those who register using this application form and provide the name of the firm's director and request their educational certificates for credential verification. We randomize whether they are provided a minority-sounding name or non-minority sounding name. Additionally, we also randomize whether we tell the respondents that we will contact two of their listed contacts solicited in the initial form. There are four treatment arms: minority employer, non-minority employer, minority employer + reference check, and non-minority employer + reference check.

2024-07-05

2024-07-19

Interview offer take-up

We call up all participants and tell them that they have been selected for interviewing with the team by the director. To confirm their interview participation, we ask them to send us their 10th/12th grade transcripts or certificates. We use document submission rate as a measure of their interest in participating in the interview.

Applicant Quality
Information acquisition behavior
Interview Participation
Job take-up/Training

Applicant quality: we plan to look at multiple measures of applicant quality. 1. Education level as declared in online application form. 2. Whether they have prior work experience 3. Performance in maths, comprehension and attention-check questions in the online form

Information acquisition behavior: During the document interview offer call, we ask applicants if they have any questions about the job or the firm and record the number of questions they ask and amount of time spent in Q&A. We also plan to look at Call Disconnect Rates. The variable indicates whether the call was ended by the applicant after learning about the director’s name.

Interview Participation: We record whether the applicant answers the call and completes the telephonic interview at the scheduled time and date. We also look at the average score received by candidates during the interview as a measure of candidate quality.

Job take-up/Training: We measure whether the applicant attends the training session after submitting documents and completing the interview.

I run a Facebook advertisement to gauge the interest of candidates seeking positions as field surveyors, requiring them to complete an online form. This form solicits their contact details, educational qualifications, past experience, the names of two references, demographic details, questions testing their comprehension and mathematical skills, and the source through which they learned about the job. Candidates are informed that their references may be contacted if they are shortlisted.


We then conduct a basic screening based on educational qualifications. Candidates who pass this screening receive a phone call informing them that they have been shortlisted to participate in an interview for the job. During this call, we provide the name of the firm's director and request their educational certificates or transcripts for credential verification. The script for the interview-offer call varies in terms of the name of director and info on reference check. There are four experimental groups:

1. Minority Employer: Candidates will be informed that they are being considered by the survey firm whose director (minority-sounding name) has shortlisted them for an interview, and they should submit the required documents if interested in getting interviewed.

2. Non-Minority Employer: Candidates will be informed that they are being considered by the survey firm whose director (non-minority-sounding name) has shortlisted them for an interview, and they should submit the required documents if interested in getting interviewed.

3. Minority Employer + Reference Check: Candidates will be informed that they are being considered by the survey firm whose director (minority-sounding name) has shortlisted them for an interview, and they should submit the required documents if interested in getting interviewed. They will also receive this additional information during the call: the firm’s director will call up their references (names will be inserted using the data from sign up form) and inform them that you have applied to work for him/her and verify your prior work experience or education credentials.”

4. Non-Minority Employer + Reference Check: Candidates will be informed that they are being considered by the survey firm whose director(non-minority sounding name) has shortlisted them for an interview, and they should submit the required documents if interested in getting interviewed. They will also receive information about the reference check from the potential employer as before



Upon submission of their documents, candidates proceed to the interview stage, followed by an invitation to the office for training. Our analysis utilises the data collected at various stages of this experiment.

Randomization done in office by a computer

Individual level randomization

No

0

3952

988 applicants in each treatment arm