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Implications of Public Sector Hiring Structures on Private Sector Labor Markets

Last registered on June 08, 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
June 08, 2025, 1:15 PM EDT

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

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. June 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15860-1.1
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 (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2025-06-09
Intervention End Date
2026-03-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Interview callback decisions
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. Resumes will vary in whether a candidate reveals a history of preparing for government exams. Callbacks received by candidates with experience preparing for government exams will be compared to callbacks 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
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 the 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. The control condition shows a graduate who has worked continuously in the private sector after college and has never attempted the government examination. The treatment arm represents a candidate who has prepared for the government exam since college graduation. Within the treatment arm, I cross-randomize whether the candidate has private sector experience in addition to government exam preparation. I additionally randomize the amount of time that has elapsed since graduation—one, two, or three years—creating a 3 × 3 factorial design. Because all other resume attributes are held constant by construction, differences in employer responses across arms identify the causal effect of substituting one, two, or three years after graduation of exam preparation for equivalent years of full-time private-sector experience.

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 who reveal no information about their career break. This experiment will have three 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 but reveals no reason for the career break. The third 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, 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
500 job ads
Sample size: planned number of observations
9 resumes sent to 500 job ads, resulting in 4500 observations.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1500 control resumes, 3000 treatment resumes.
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
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials