Intermediary Prior Familiarity Bias
RCTClinical Trial
Public employment agencies often struggle to achieve successful job placements when expanding services to unfamiliar firms whose specific organizational needs are unknown [27-29].
Picture this
Think of a tailor making custom suits; if the tailor already knows a client's exact measurements and preferences from past visits, the new suit fits well immediately, whereas making a suit for a complete stranger without prior interactions often leads to poor fitting [28, 29].
What the evidence says
Net employment creation was statistically significant only for firms with prior agency contact (+0.124 hires of registered jobseekers, p = 0.021), while firms without prior contact saw net hiring effects near zero (-0.005 hires) [29, 31].
- Who was studied
- N = 7,438 firms in France (39% of which had baseline contact with public employment agencies in the preceding 8 months) [6, 7, 30].
- How
- Heterogeneous treatment effect estimation within a Randomized Controlled Trial, splitting the sample by baseline agency interaction indicators [10, 28-30].
What to do
Target intensive recruitment matching services toward firms with established institutional interactions before scaling outreach to unknown employers [29, 32].
From the source
"In contrast we find that employment creation is completely centered on firms that were previously in contact with the PES. We find average treatment effects very close to zero for firms which were not formerly in contact with PES counselors." [29]
Are_Active_Labor_Market_Policies_Directed_at_Firms_Effective_Evidence.pdf