Experimental Design
Our study subjects are all jobseekers who are invited to and sign up to the job fair and apply for at least one job and all employers who participate in the job fair. All study subjects are users of the online job portal that organizes the job fair.
To make jobseekers understand the signaling mechanism, the organizer of the job fair holds online sessions and explain what it is and how to use it. The sessions are held multiple times prior to and during the job fair. The organizer explains the mechanism to employers individually.
Jobseekers can send HPSs to the maximum of two employers. They can send HPSs either when or after they submit job applications. Specifically, when they are about to submit job applications on the job fair website, they are asked whether they attach HPSs unless two HPSs are already exhausted. After they submit job applications, they can also send HPSs from their account page on the job fair website.
On employers’ account page, employers can view whether job applicants send HPSs to their jobs. (Note that since each employer advertises exactly one job in the fair, sending HPSs to employers is equivalent to sending HPSs to jobs.) More specifically, on the employer account page, employers can first view the list of all applicants. This list shows summary information about each applicant including whether s/he sent a HPS. Then, if employers click an applicant from the list, employers can open his/her application package and view his/her detailed information.
The data are the following:
1. Administrative data of the job fair: It includes the information about jobs, employers, jobseekers, applications, and HPSs.
2. Administrative data of the online job portal: The data includes the information about jobs posted by our study subject employers, the applicants to the jobs, and jobs that are applied by our study subject jobseekers.
3. Baseline survey data: The baseline jobseeker data is based on the online forms submitted by jobseekers to apply for the job fair. The baseline employer data is collected by the online survey too.
4. Endline survey data: We conduct endline surveys of jobseekers and employers twice, approximately 2 months and 9 months after the job fair. The modes of surveys are phone for jobseekers and in-person for employers. If in-person interviews are infeasible, interviews will be on zoom or phone.