Intervention(s)
The intervention design is inspired by the correspondence study approach. However, unlike a traditional correspondence study, in our setting, an employer reaches out to potential employees. Male and female entrepreneurs send emails to potential applicants, offering a new job opportunity and the chance to schedule a 5-to-10-minute phone or Zoom call, or an in-person campus meeting to discuss further details about the job opening.
We create 9 identical pairs of mock founders and startups (9 founded by males and 9 founded by females). Each male startup has a corresponding identical female startup. These startups are modeled after real startups. Our companies span various industries, including green tech, healthcare tech, prop tech, and others. Each mock startup has an online presence, including a website, a unique email domain, and a presence on LinkedIn. For each type of startup, we create two distinct startups with different websites and company names. The websites are identical except for the company name, founder pictures, and founder names. Most startups are represented as having two founders, either both male or both female.
Applicants can identify the gender of the founders either by reading on the startup’s website or by visiting the founders’ LinkedIn profiles. In both cases, gender is signaled through pictures and names.
The founders’ pictures are generated using artificial intelligence. We create images of non-existent individuals through online tools and use AI to generate matching counterparts of the opposite gender, preserving most key facial traits, such as eye shape, mouth width and height, the distance between eyes, smile, etc. Using online surveys, we verify that the male and female pairs have similar attributes, including attractiveness, trustworthiness, and other relevant characteristics.
The male and female founders also have LinkedIn profiles that perfectly match their employment and education history. The only differences between these profiles are the founders’ pictures and names.
Our sample of potential employees consists of individuals with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in computer science and business administration from more than 30 of the top 100 U.S. universities. We include only universities that maintain publicly accessible directories of student emails. We use LinkedIn to gather students who are graduating in 2025 with Bachelor's or Master's degrees from our target majors and universities. We include individuals whose names can be unambiguously matched to their university email listings.
To provide some indirect compensation to individuals who responded to the mock entrepreneurs, we shared their email contact information and online resumes with real entrepreneurs in similar industries. When sharing this information, we emphasize that these individuals are interested in startups like those managed by the real entrepreneurs. The real entrepreneurs will reach out to these individuals about potential employment opportunities if they align with their experience and the needs of their businesses.