What is the right profile for getting a job? A stated choice experiment of the recruitment process

Abstract

We study the recruitment behaviour of Swedish employers using data from a stated choice experiment. In the experiment, the employers are first asked to describe an employee who recently and voluntarily left the firm and then to choose between two hypothetical applicants to invite to a job interview or to hire as a replacement for their previous employee. The two applicants differ with respect to characteristics such as gender, age, education, work experience, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family situation, weight, and health, but otherwise have similar characteristics as the previous employee. Our results show that employers prefer not to recruit applicants who are old, non-European, Muslim, Jewish, obese, have several children, or have a history of sickness absence. We also calculate the reduction in wage costs needed to make employers indifferent between applicants with and without these characteristics, and find that wage costs would have to be reduced by up to 50 % for applicants with some characteristics.