Skill Complementarities in Hiring: Experimental Evidence on Employer Preferences over Soft-Skill Bundles

Last registered on September 28, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Skill Complementarities in Hiring: Experimental Evidence on Employer Preferences over Soft-Skill Bundles
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019743
Initial registration date
September 22, 2026

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
September 28, 2026, 8:58 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Laia Navarro-Sola
Affiliation
Stockholm University IIES
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Emily Beam
PI Affiliation
University of Vermont
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PI Name
Ursula Mello
PI Affiliation
Insper
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PI Name
Ricardo Dahis
PI Affiliation
Monash University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-09-16
End date
2026-11-30
Keywords
Labor
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study examines how employers value individual soft skills and combinations of soft skills when evaluating entry-level candidates. We recruit 600 U.S.-based professionals with hiring experience to complete 12 discrete-choice tasks, each presenting two hypothetical candidates and a no-hire option. Candidate profiles experimentally vary academic performance, experience, gender, expected wage, and soft skills. The two confirmatory hypotheses are that employers treat reliability and teamwork as complements and initiative and planning as substitutes. We also estimate descriptive willingness to pay for improvements in each of eight soft skills and conduct secondary analyses of trade-offs across skills, preference heterogeneity, and the association between employers' beliefs about skill co-occurrence and their valuations of skill combinations.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Beam, Emily et al. 2026. "Skill Complementarities in Hiring: Experimental Evidence on Employer Preferences over Soft-Skill Bundles." AEA RCT Registry. September 28. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19743-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
A factorial hiring discrete-choice experiment. Employers evaluate hypothetical entry-level candidates whose academic performance, experience, gender, expected wage, and soft-skill profiles are experimentally varied.
Intervention Start Date
2026-09-22
Intervention End Date
2026-10-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Reliability-by-teamwork interaction coefficient.
2. Initiative-by-planning interaction coefficient.
3. Population-level willingness to pay for a one-level improvement in each of the eight soft skills.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The two interaction coefficients are estimated from the primary panel mixed-logit model. Reliability–teamwork is predicted to be positive; initiative–planning is predicted to be negative. The two tests form one Romano–Wolf-adjusted confirmatory family.

Willingness to pay is the estimated marginal utility of a skill improvement divided by the fixed wage-disutility coefficient and is expressed as a proportion of the employer’s stated market-rate wage. These are descriptive outcomes without directional hypothesis tests.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
- Marginal rates of substitution across soft skills.
- Model-implied preference heterogeneity.
- Belief moderation of focal-skill interaction valuations.
- Exploratory interactions and state-dependent willingness to pay for other design-identified skill pairs.
- Stated-versus-revealed skill valuations.
- Heterogeneity by sector and firm characteristics.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Belief moderation measures the association between employers’ perceived conditional co-occurrence of two skills and their valuation of that skill combination. It is associational, not a causal mechanism decomposition. Other secondary outcomes are defined in the attached pre-analysis plan.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We recruit 600 U.S.-based professionals with hiring experience through Prolific. Each employer completes 12 choice tasks, each presenting two hypothetical candidates and a no-hire option. Candidate profiles experimentally vary academic performance, experience, gender, expected wage, and three displayed soft skills. Every task includes either reliability and teamwork or initiative and planning as a focal pair.

The two confirmatory hypotheses are that reliability and teamwork are complements and that initiative and planning are substitutes.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Computer randomization.
Randomization Unit
The employer is the unit of assignment: each employer is randomized evenly to one of ten survey arms, formed by five design blocks crossed with two display arrangements that exchange the two candidates' on-screen positions. Candidate attributes vary at the candidate-profile level within employer and task; display position is fixed within employer and varies only across arms.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
600 respondents
Sample size: planned number of observations
600 respondents, completing 12 experimental choice tasks each, for approximately 7,200 respondent × choice-task observations
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
There are no conventional treatment arms. Approximately 120 employers are assigned to each of five experimental-design blocks.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
At (N=600), the simulated 80% minimum detectable effect is approximately 0.13 for the reliability-by-teamwork interaction and 0.11 for the initiative-by-planning interaction, measured in utility-coefficient units. The approximate 80% threshold for supporting both predicted interactions is 0.13.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Vermont IRB for Human Participant Research CHRBSS (Behavioral)
IRB Approval Date
2025-10-13
IRB Approval Number
#STUDY00003760
Analysis Plan

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