Directing job search: a large scale experiment

Last registered on March 31, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Directing job search: a large scale experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005614
Initial registration date
March 29, 2020

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
March 31, 2020, 3:17 PM 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

Affiliation
Paris School of Economics - INRA

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Paris School of Economics

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2019-11-19
End date
2024-07-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Using "La bonne boîte", a French online job search assistance service that aims at helping unemployed job seekers to locate hiring establishments, we investigate the impact of targeted job search recommendations on the job finding rates of job seekers,the job filling rate of establishments and the potential reduction in occupational mismatch at the commuting zone level
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
BEHAGHEL, Luc and Marc GURGAND. 2020. "Directing job search: a large scale experiment." AEA RCT Registry. March 31. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5614-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2019-11-19
Intervention End Date
2022-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Job finding rates
Job filling rates
Wages
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
In the first phase of the project, we conduct a two-sided randomized experiment involving about 1.2 million job-seekers and 40,000 establishments, in 94 commuting zones in France (about one fourth of the French labor market).
On the business-as-usual mode, the LBB website directs each job-seeker toward a list of firms most likely to hire him according to the location and occupation criteria he enters. During the experiment, while the platform remains available to all, we introduce two experimental treatments. First, we randomly select a subset of firms among those short-listed by the LBB algorithm. During four weeks, those “treated” firms are displayed in priority in response to job-seekers’ requests on the website, while the remaining “control” firms are not displayed (or displayed at the bottom of the list if there are too few treated firms satisfying the search criteria). Second, we randomly draw two thirds of the 1.2 million job-seekers to receive two or four emails pushing the LBB service, with specific recommendations toward up to eight of the treated firms.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
In office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Two-sided randomization: Establishments and job-seekers
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No clustering
Sample size: planned number of observations
1.2 million job-seekers. 40,000 establishements.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
2/3 treated
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Paris School of Economics IRB
IRB Approval Date
2019-11-12
IRB Approval Number
2019 022