Tess Lallemant Do firms know what they are looking for? A Demand-Side Experiment to Reduce Labor Market Frictions Abstract: Do employer-side frictions reduce match quality in the labor market for university graduates? I conduct a randomized experiment with 376 firms posting 510 job openings in Kampala, Uganda, providing an intervention to help firms identify and communicate their hiring needs when writing job descriptions. I vary whether firms use the resulting job descriptions as public job advertisements or only for internal candidate screening, separately identifying effects through better signaling versus improved evaluation criteria. Treated firms post significantly more detailed job descriptions that attract nearly 40% larger applicant pools with better skill alignment. The intervention reduces personal network-based hiring—from 8% to essentially zero—suggesting that expanded formal applicant pools provide viable alternatives to personal connections. However, these recruitment improvements do not translate into short term better employment matches. Neither wages, employer-reported skill fit, nor performance ratings improve on average. Preliminary analysis of treatment heterogeneity suggests that organizational capacity shapes outcomes. Among firms with existing HR departments, evaluation tools improve skill match quality, while firms without HR show no such gains. The results establish that firms struggle to systematically articulate hiring requirements—a meaningful friction in developing economy labor markets—but that addressing this constraint alone is insufficient without complementary hiring infrastructure.
Panelists: Samira Rafaela, Former Member of European Parliament, Visiting Scholar, Cornell Law School Chiara Cristofolini, Associate Professor of Labor Law, University of Trento, Visiting Scholar, Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations Sarosh Kuruvilla, Andrew J. Nathanson Family Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations, Global Labor and Work, Academic Director, Global Labor Institute Moderator: Chantal Thomas, Radice Family Professor of Law and Director, Cornell Center for Global Economic Justice Cornell Law School
