A signal of (Train)ability? Grade repetition and hiring chances

Abstract

This article contributes to the nascent literature on the effect of grade retention in school on later labour market success. A field experiment is conducted to rule out the endogeneity of both outcomes. More concretely, various treatments of grade retention are randomly assigned to fictitious résumés sent in application to real vacancies. Overall, grade retention does not significantly affect positive call-back by employers. However, when narrowing in on vacancies for occupations where on-the-job training is important, job candidates with a record of grade retention are 16% less likely to receive a positive reaction. This finding is consistent with Queuing theory.

What Does Job Applicants' Body Art Signal to Employers?

“…Furthermore, the effects of candidate characteristics align with the literature. We find significantly higher probabilities for better study results (Baert & Verhaest, 2021;Pinto & Ramalheira, 2017), lower probabilities after repeating a grade (Baert & Picchio, 2021;DiStasio, 2014) and higher probabilities when listing a student job in line with one's studies (Van Belle et al, 2020). Interestingly, the effect of a man revealing body art via his CV is of the same order as that of experiencing grade retention.…”

Costly mistakes: Why and when spelling errors in resumes jeopardise interview chances

“…Moreover, earlier research has evidenced the dimensions’ relevance in recruiters’ decision-making [ 4 , 7 , 33 ]. In particular for the Flemish hiring context, see the field experiments on the effect of gender, grade retention, volunteering and achievement in tertiary education on employment opportunities of Baert and colleagues [ 41 ], Baert and Picchio [ 42 ], Baert and Vujić [ 43 ] and Baert and Verhaest [ 39 ]. Note that manipulating fewer relevant dimensions could have led to an overestimation of the spelling-error penalty inflicted by recruiters because (mimicking) a real-life hiring decision also requires recruiters to combine different sources of information.…”

Higher Education Non-Completion, Employers, and Labor Market Integration: Experimental Evidence

“…While current contributions have focused on specific aspects of education, such as for-profit degrees or study duration (e.g. Deterding and Pedulla 2016;Baert and Picchio 2021), the fact that many students leave college without a degree, has been largely overlooked by this literature (exception: Di Stasio and van de Werfhorst 2016).…”