Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets

Last registered on December 17, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015860
Initial registration date
April 23, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 30, 2025, 9:05 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
December 17, 2025, 5:26 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Shruthi Ramesh
Affiliation
UC San Diego
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-04-15
End date
2026-06-30
Keywords
Labor
Additional Keywords
public sector recruitment, government jobs, India
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Public sector jobs are highly sought after in developing countries, with candidates spending years unemployed to compete for them. In India, less than one percent of candidates who compete end up successful, which raises questions about the long-term labor market outcomes of those who don’t make the cut. Using a resume evaluation experiment with recruiters at a large Indian staffing firm, this study quantifies the social deadweight loss (in terms of foregone earnings) associated with prolonged exam preparation. Findings from this study will highlight how private sector employers evaluate the growing cohort of government job aspirants and will inform inform policy recommendations on making the time spent on exam preparation useful outside of public sector recruitment drives.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ramesh, Shruthi. 2025. "Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets." AEA RCT Registry. December 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15860-2.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Treatment resumes will belong to candidates with a history of government exam preparation after graduating college. The control group comprises candidates who worked in the private sector after graduating college.
Intervention Start Date
2025-12-15
Intervention End Date
2026-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Interest in shortlisting the resume (1-10 scale), rating of skills shown in the resume against the job description (1-10 scale), rating of perceived likelihood that the candidate will stay at the firm for at least a year if hired (1-10 scale), and pay conditional on hiring.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The focus of the experiment is on the differential effects of staying unemployed to prepare for government exams relative to working in the private sector after graduation. The study will comprise a large-scale resume experiment conducted as face to face interviews with recruiters in a large staffing firm. Resumes will vary in whether a candidate reveals a history of preparing for government exams. Ratings received by candidates with experience preparing for government exams will be compared to ratings received by candidates who have never prepared for government exams and have worked in the private sector. All other characteristics including gender, religion, school and college quality, academic grades, and extra-curricular activities will be held constant across all resume variants within a job posting.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Resumes will be generated using code that will randomly assign candidate characteristics (government vs private sector choice after graduation, years since graduation, college score, etc) to each variant. Resumes are generated using the program developed by Lahey and Beasley (2009).
Randomization Unit
Resume
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
100 recruiters
Sample size: planned number of observations
30 resumes shown to each recruiter (total of 3000 observations)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
About half of resumes shown will belong to the treatment group (government exam preparation after graduation) and half will belong to the control group (private sector work experience after graduation)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of California San Diego
IRB Approval Date
2025-04-18
IRB Approval Number
812431
IRB Name
University of California San Diego
IRB Approval Date
2025-12-03
IRB Approval Number
813773
Analysis Plan

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