Abstract: We investigate employer recruiting behavior, using detailed firm-level data from a national survey of employers hiring recent college graduates. We show employers adjust recruiting effort, hiring standards, and compensation with the business cycle, beliefs about tightness, and their own hiring plans. We then show that firms expending greater recruiting effort hire more individuals per vacancy. The results suggest that when firms want to increase hires they adjust vacancies and recruiting intensity per vacancy. If true more broadly in the labor market, it may help explain the breakdown in the standard matching function during the Great Recession. For the firms in our sample, the difference in firm vacancy yields between 2011 and 2015 would have more than doubled if recruiting effort had been constant. Finally, we estimate that our measure of recruiting effort can explain 61% of the elasticity of the vacancy yield with respect to hires in our data.
- Geography of Jobs (with Alex Bartik), 2021
- “Youth Hiring and Labor Market Tightness” (January 2022) (AEA P&P)