Recruitment Effort Substitution
RCTClinical Trial
Employers spend significant internal time and administrative effort manually browsing candidate databases and sifting through incoming applicant pools to fill job openings.
Picture this
Think of hiring a personal grocery shopper instead of walking up and down supermarket aisles yourself. When the personal shopper handles the search and selects the items, the customer conserves their own time and energy while still receiving what they need.
What the evidence says
Treatment reduced firm-initiated candidate search efforts by 76% (-0.841 potential matches per vacancy, p < 0.01) and decreased organic jobseeker applications by 39% (-2.670 applications per vacancy, p < 0.01).
- Who was studied
- N = 1,705 permanent contract vacancies posted with the Public Employment Service across 7,438 French firms.
- How
- Non-experimental Inverse Probability Weighted (IPW) regression evaluating applicant volume by search channel over a two-week post-posting window.
What to do
Transfer active candidate sourcing and applicant database filtering tasks from private human resource personnel to public agency caseworkers.
From the source
"Treated firms significantly reduce the amount of effort they expend in searching for candidates to fill their vacancies as the PES engages in preselecting candidates for them."
Are_Active_Labor_Market_Policies_Directed_at_Firms_Effective_Evidence.pdf