Mobile SMS Vacancy Dissemination
RCTReview
Traditional Public Employment Services rely heavily on physical office visits or passive online portals, creating search costs and information delays for job seekers who lack regular internet access or transportation.
Picture this
Imagine a library that requires visitors to physically check a bulletin board every morning to see if new books have arrived versus sending an automated text message directly to their phones the minute a desired book is returned.
What the evidence says
Delivering job vacancy information via SMS generated modest positive impacts on short-term (2-month) employment, whereas traditional non-digital intermediation produced no statistically detectable effect. Sending SMS alerts containing vacancies from both inside and outside the PES database yielded the largest gains in employability and online search activity at minimal additional cost.
- Who was studied
- Job seekers registered with Peru's Public Employment Service (PES).
- How
- Multi-treatment randomized controlled trial comparing traditional in-person PES services against automated SMS vacancy alerts drawing from internal PES databases and external job postings.
What to do
Integrate automated SMS job vacancy alerts into public employment service workflows to push relevant openings directly to job seekers' mobile devices.
From the source
"Integrating SMS communication into this PES resulted in modest positive impacts on participants' short-term (2-month) employment, while participation in the traditional non-digital intermediation did not result in any detectable effects."
ENG_Job-search-assistance.pdf