Subjective Return Belief Invariance
Proactive outreach from recruiters or platforms might increase application rates by signaling higher job quality or candidate suitability, rather than by reducing execution friction. If belief updating drives application behavior, interventions operate through subjective expectation shifts rather than friction reduction.
Picture this
Imagine a student receiving a direct invitation from a university admissions office to complete an application. If the student assumes the invitation means they have a higher chance of acceptance, they update their expectations. But if the invitation merely hands them a pre-filled form without changing their belief about their admission chances, the increased application rate stems entirely from lowering physical effort rather than boosting optimism.
What the evidence says
Phone call treatment produced an effect of -1.1 percentage points on expected offer probability (p = 0.542) and +0.2 percentage points on percentage of jobs deemed desirable (p = 0.929), confirming that subjective beliefs about match quality and interview returns were unchanged by treatment.
- Who
- N = 2,081 jobseekers surveyed in follow-up modules in Lahore, Pakistan.
- How
- Randomized Controlled Trial measuring subjective expectations of interview probabilities and job desirability across phone-call treatment and control groups, with selection correction for survey non-response.
What to do
Disambiguate behavioral interventions by evaluating whether outreach alters user beliefs about outcome probabilities or merely removes execution steps.
From the source
"Table C.8 shows that treatment does not shift jobseekers' answers to either of these questions... The survey data show that treatment does not increase respondents' perceptions of the average values of V or P on the platform."
Why_Don’t_Jobseekers_Search_More_Barriers_and_Returns_to_Search.pdf