Does online search improve the match quality of new hires?

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of the high-speed internet expansion on the match quality of new hires. We combine data on internet availability at the local level with German individual register and vacancy data. Results show that internet availability has no major impact on the stability of new matches and their wages. We confirm these findings using vacancy data, by explicitly comparing match outcomes of online and non-online recruits. Further results show that online recruiting not only raises the number of applicants and the share of unsuitable candidates per vacancy, but also induces employers to post more vacancies.

What is the best website for recruiting?

“…Second, other websites are not associated with better‐quality matches or longer vacancy durations than those from non‐Internet channels, even though they do lead to the examination of more applications. With the notable exception of matches via the company's website, these results are in line with those in Gürtzgen et al (2021), who found no major effect of online recruitment on match quality, as measured by the wages of new hires.…”

“…They will thus have lower average satisfaction than successful recruiters. Nevertheless, Gürtzgen et al (2021) found that online search does not significantly increase the probability of recruitment failure, so that this bias may be minor. Note: The first four outcomes are modeled via probit regressions, and the last two, ordered, outcomes by ordered probit regressions.…”

“…Better broadband coverage in Norway reduced both average vacancy duration and the share of companies reporting recruitment difficulties (Bhuller et al, 2019). Regarding the quality of the match, online recruitment does not seem to have had a major impact on the wages of new hires in Germany, but slightly increased the duration of the match due to fewer job‐to‐job transitions (Gürtzgen et al, 2021).…”

The Behavioral, Economic, and Political Impact of the Internet and Social Media: Empirical Challenges and Approaches

“…Several other studies have used distance from the network node as an exogenous source of variation of Internet exposure. Gurtzgen et al (2021) and Gürtzgen et al (2021) combined information on the geolocation of Germany's broadband network nodes with the Integrated Employment Biographies of German workers provided by the Federal Employment Agency to assess the impact of the Internet on workers' employment prospects between 1998 and 2008. The authors instrumented Internet availability, gauged as the share of households with the possibility to access a DSL connection in a municipality, with the distance of the nearest LE from each municipality's center (population-weighted).…”

The Impact of Internet Use on Rural Women’s Off-Farm Work Participation: Empirical Evidence from China

“…Scholars have, in referring to the intrinsic mechanism, tended to use information-seeking theory to explain the off-farm employment-enhancing role that Internet use performs in the case of women. Additionally, they propose that Internet use has led to an increase in the frequency of firm job advertisements by and in job searches by job seekers [17]-they observe that this has improved the efficiency of labor market operations and the quality of career matching. Some scholars also consider the influence of Internet use on rural women's personal behavior.…”