Investigating the future of job search
For more information, visit the Job Search Lab
Much of the job search and recruitment activity has moved online over the last twenty years. This offers exciting avenues to understand the job search process and to help job seekers find new employment. Our aim is for LDI to become a key player in research on job search and recruitment platforms.
This requires novel work at the intersection of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and the labor market, which we aim to achieve by leveraging insights from labor economics with the great strength of Cornell in Computer Science and Information Systems.
LDI is currently working on the development of digital platform (website/mobile app) replicating common features of popular on-line job search platforms. This platform will be based on a vacancy feed that will be commercially purchased and a sample of users that will be incentivized to use the platform. The primary goal will be to be a viable platform that can be used for research purposes.
We have two specific goals we wish to achieve:
- Exploring what features of these platforms may affect individuals from different groups differently: Most of the successful systems are private and share only small subsets of their insights and methods with the research community or the wider public. This lack of transparency in the algorithms and the data that is used in them limits our understanding of how they affect job search outcomes and, specifically, how they affect people from vulnerable groups.
- Exploring the potential for interventions that aim at improving job search outcomes.
Select papers
Belot, M., Kircher, P., & Muller, P. (2019). Providing advice to jobseekers at low cost: An experimental study on online advice. The review of economic studies, 86(4), 1411-1447.
Belot, M., Kircher, P., & Muller, P. (2022). How Wage Announcements Affect Job Search—A Field Experiment. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 14(4), 1-67.
Kircher, P. A. (2020). Search design and online job search–new avenues for applied and experimental research. Labour Economics, 64, 101820.
Kircher, P. (2022). Job search in the 21st Century. Journal of the European Economic Association, 20(6), 2317-2352.