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Trial Title
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Before
Employer Preferences and Information Asymmetry in On-Campus Recruiting Labor Markets
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After
Employer Preferences and Information Asymmetry in Campus Recruiting Labor Markets
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Trial Status
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Before
in_development
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on_going
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Abstract
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Before
On-campus recruiting is a key platform for many firms to recruit fresh talent 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 applicants have been shown to drive demographic gaps in wages and other labor outcomes. This study aims to address these gaps in the literature using various experiments, particularly, an Incentivized Resume Rating exercise (following Kessler, Low, Sullivan, 2019) on employers and job seeking students participating in on-campus recruiting, as well as an information intervention experiment on employers to determine if they use resume attributes to extract information about the unobserved productivity of job applicants.
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After
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.
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Last Published
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Before
June 12, 2023 11:24 AM
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After
October 06, 2023 01:17 AM
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Intervention (Public)
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Before
Individual-level randomized intervention
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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.
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Intervention Start Date
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September 01, 2023
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October 06, 2023
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Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
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
In the student sample, the main outcome of interest is:
3. student's assumption about employer hiring interest
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After
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)
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
These are all primary measures based on resume ratings on a 10-point Likert scale.
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After
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
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
Not available.
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After
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.
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Randomization Unit
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Before
Individual level randomization
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Resume-level randomization
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Planned Number of Clusters
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70-100 employers
600-1000 job seeking students
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After
140-200 employers
1000 students
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Planned Number of Observations
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Before
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 job applicant will rate 15 resumes, so the number of observations derived from the job applicant sample will be 15 times the number of participants.
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After
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.
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
The information intervention experiment will be conducted on a balanced sample (50% treatment, 50% control)
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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.
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Intervention (Hidden)
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Before
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After
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 is described in more detail in Analysis Plan.
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Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
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After
Various demographic, economic, professional characteristics of employers and students that may factor into their beliefs and preferences
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