Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets

Last registered on April 30, 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.

Locations

Country

India

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Shruthi Ramesh

Affiliation

UC San Diego

Contact Primary Investigator

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 correspondence study with private sector employers on India’s biggest job platform, this study investigates whether exam preparation has costs in terms of private sector job opportunities for unsuccessful candidates. Findings from this study will highlight the differences in interview callbacks for candidates with a history of preparing for government exams, relative to candidates who have remained in the private sector since graduation. The study will also highlight if the scores in the government exam hold any signal value in the private sector, to 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. April 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15860-1.0

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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 (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-04-28

Intervention End Date

2025-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Interview callback decisions

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The experiment design closely aligns with prior correspondence studies. 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 three main experiments. The first experiment will highlight the differential callbacks received by candidates with a history of preparing for government exams and how the callbacks vary with each additional year spent on exam preparation. The second experiment will investigate whether the performance in government exams influences callback decisions. To this end, employers will receive resumes of candidates with varying scores in their most recent exam attempt. Finally, a third experiment will benchmark the differential callbacks received by government exam candidates against candidates with career breaks for other reasons. All other characteristics including the caste, gender, religion, school and college quality, academic grades, and extra-curricular activities will be held constant across all resume variants.

Experimental Design Details

Effects for all experiments will be estimated through variation in callbacks within job ad (the specification will include job ad fixed effects) and SEs will be clustered at the job ad level.

Experiment 1:
The goal of this experiment is to analyze how callbacks for government aspirants change with every additional year of exam preparation, relative to candidates who have been working in the private sector. This experiment will use nine resume variants (three candidate types and three age groups). The pure control group will be candidates who have never prepared for the government exam and have worked in the private sector since graduation. The first treatment arm will be candidates who took the exam once (right after graduation), didn’t get the government job, but have been working in the private sector. The second treatment arm will be candidates who have never worked in the private sector and have only been preparing for government exams since graduation. There will be three age groups within each treatment arm (1 year since graduation, 2 years since graduation, and 5 years since graduation).

Experiment 2:
The goal of this experiment is to analyze whether callbacks change with different scores in government exams. There will be six resumes in total for this experiment. All profiles will be of candidates who are 23 years old. The first five resumes will belong to government exam candidates, with varying score levels. The sixth and final resume will belong to a private sector candidate who does not have any government exam attempts to show.

Experiment 3:
This experiment will help benchmark if the differential callbacks received by government exam candidates differ from candidates with other types of career breaks. This experiment will have four resumes sent to each job ad. As in experiment 2, all candidates will be 23 years old. The first resume will belong to a government exam candidate. The second resume will belong to a candidate who took a career break for personal reasons (attending to ill mother who later passed away). The third is a candidate who took a career break to pursue volunteering in an NGO. Finally, the fourth is a private sector candidate who does not have a career break.

Randomization Method

Resumes will be generated using code that will randomly assign candidate characteristics (government vs private sector choice after graduation, years since graduation, government exam score) to each variant.

Randomization Unit

Resume

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

2000 jobs per experiment

Sample size: planned number of observations

Experience experiment: 18000 resume-job pairs Score experiment: 12000 resume job pairs Benchmarking experiment: 8000 resume-job pairs

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Experience experiment: 6000 resume-job pairs for government candidates, 12000 resume job pairs for private sector candidates
Score experiment: 2000 resume-job pairs for each score level

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB