Employer Preferences and Information Asymmetry in Campus Recruiting Labor Markets

Last registered on December 19, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Employer Preferences and Information Asymmetry in Campus Recruiting Labor Markets
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009574
Initial registration date
June 16, 2022

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
June 18, 2022, 10:26 AM EDT

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

Last updated
December 19, 2023, 7:23 PM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Tarikua Erda
Affiliation
Columbia University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Laura Caron
PI Affiliation
Columbia University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-07-15
End date
2024-06-30
Keywords
Education, Labor
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Undergraduate recruitment is a key channel for many firms to recruit workers for entry level jobs. However, the preferences of employers over job applicant characteristics have not been granularly studied. Moreover, little is known about students' perception about employer preferences, even though information asymmetries among job seekers may to contribute to disparities in labor market outcomes. This study aims to address these gaps in the literature using surveys and experiments on both employers and students participating in campus recruiting programs. Particularly, an Incentivized Resume Rating exercise (following Kessler, Low, Sullivan, 2019) will be conducted by employers to understand their preferences and their hiring heuristics. Job seeking students will also perform a similar exercise and also report their beliefs about employer preferences, which will help to expand our understanding of information asymmetries between the labor demand and supply sides, as well as the heterogeneity in the degree to which different types of job seekers understand employer preferences accurately.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Caron, Laura and Tarikua Erda. 2023. "Employer Preferences and Information Asymmetry in Campus Recruiting Labor Markets." AEA RCT Registry. December 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9574-7.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Resume-level randomized intervention

Following Kessler, Low, Sullivan (2019), the incentivized rating exercise will present employers with various hypothetical resumes in which the GPA, work experience, activities, and characteristics of the hypothetical student presented in the resume are randomly selected and combined into a single hypothetical resume.
Intervention Start Date
2023-10-06
Intervention End Date
2024-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
In the employer sample, the outcomes to be studied are:
1. the hiring interest of employer
2. the employer's belief about the likelihood of the applicant to accept job offer
3. maximum annual salary the employer is willing to pay
4. 100-point allocation across 8 resume characteristics by their relative importance

In the student sample, the main outcomes of interest are the student's belief about outcomes 1 and 4 listed above (for example, #1 would be elicited based on the student's assumption about employer hiring interest)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
1&2. Hiring interest and belief about candidate's likelihood of accepting offer is based on resume ratings on a 10-point Likert scale.
3. WTP of employers is measured in USD
4. the relative ranking employers and students give to various resume characteristics will be elicited using an exercise to allocate 100 points. Then, to measure the (in)accuracy of each student's beliefs, we will compare the ranking assigned to a resume element by that student against the median (and average) rank assigned to that resume component by employers. We will capture both of the below discrete and continuous measures:
i. Whether a student underestimates, overestimates, or exactly estimates the relative rank of extracurriculars
ii. the Euclidean distance between the preferences of students and employers for both the directly-stated and revealed preference measures

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Various demographic, economic, professional characteristics of employers and students that may factor into their beliefs and preferences
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
As part of the Incentivized Resume Rating exercise, each employer respondent will review and rate hypothetical resumes on three different metrics: hiring interest, perceived probability of the candidate accepting an offer, and the wage the employer would offer to the candidate based on this information alone. Students will also complete this exercise as part of our study on information asymmetries.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done by a computer
Randomization Unit
Resume-level randomization
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
140-200 employers

1000 students
Sample size: planned number of observations
Each employer will rate 40 resumes, so the number of observations derived from the employer sample will be 40 times the number of employers. Each student will rate 20 resumes, so the number of observations derived from the student sample will be 20 times the number of participants.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
All employers will see each of the treatment signals in the incentivized resume rating exercise, there is no pure control group.

See Analysis Plan for further details.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Columbia IRB
IRB Approval Date
2023-09-29
IRB Approval Number
IRB-AAAU2562
Analysis Plan

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