Time-Varying Psychological Application Costs
Jobseekers experience fluctuating psychological, cognitive, or attention costs through time, causing them to repeatedly postpone submitting job applications even for high-value vacancies until application deadlines expire.
Picture this
Imagine having a quick five-minute administrative task on a to-do list, like filing an expense form. On days with high stress or competing demands, starting the task feels like climbing a mountain, so it gets delayed. On a calm day, the exact same task takes almost zero effort. Because high-friction days occur frequently, tasks get postponed indefinitely unless an external prompt forces immediate execution.
What the evidence says
Within-jobseeker crossover treatment yields statistically indistinguishable returns between marginal and inframarginal applications (p = 0.503 for interview probability, p = 0.480 for value-weighted interviews). Application submission probability decays exponentially from notification date to deadline date.
- Who
- N = 9,838 jobseekers (1,116,952 jobseeker-vacancy matches) in Lahore, Pakistan.
- How
- Randomized crossover design re-assigning control group jobseekers to phone call treatment in specific matching rounds with jobseeker fixed effects, alongside daily application timing analysis.
What to do
Structure platform notifications to provide immediate, one-click execution channels timed during moments of low cognitive burden or immediately preceding hard deadlines.
From the source
"We view time-varying psychological costs of initiating applications as a reasonable explanation for our main experimental findings... the same jobseeker will experience similar returns to applications submitted in untreated periods and in treated periods."
Why_Don’t_Jobseekers_Search_More_Barriers_and_Returns_to_Search.pdf