Skills and the graduate recruitment process Evidence from two discrete choice experiments

•We simulate the graduate recruitment process using two discrete choice experiments.•Signals of high occupation-specific skills are most important for getting a job interview.•The hiring decision depends most strongly on graduates’ professional expertise and interpersonal skills. In this study we el...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEconomics of education review Vol. 49; no. December; pp. 24 - 41
Main Authors Humburg, Martin, Velden, Rolf van der
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2015
Subjects
Anforderungsprofil
Berufsanforderung
Deutschland
Discrete choice experiment
Employability
Frankreich
Graduate recruitment
Großbritannien
Hochschulabsolvent
Human capital
Internationaler Vergleich
Italien
Lebenslauf
Niederlande
Personalauswahl
Polen
Qualifikation
Qualifikationsanforderung
Qualifikationsprofil
Schweden
Spanien
Tschechische Republik
I21
Human capital
J24
Employability
Graduate recruitment
Discrete choice experiment
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Summary:•We simulate the graduate recruitment process using two discrete choice experiments.•Signals of high occupation-specific skills are most important for getting a job interview.•The hiring decision depends most strongly on graduates’ professional expertise and interpersonal skills. In this study we elicit employers’ preferences for a variety of CV attributes and types of skills when recruiting university graduates. Using two discrete choice experiments, we simulate the two common steps of the graduate recruitment process: (1) the selection of suitable candidates for job interviews based on CVs, and (2) the hiring of graduates based on observed skills. We show that in the first step, employers attach most value to CV attributes which signal a high stock of occupation-specific human capital indicating low training costs and short adjustment periods; attributes such as relevant work experience and a good match between the field of study and the job tasks. In line with the preferences in the first step, employers’ actual hiring decision is mostly influenced by graduates’ level of professional expertise and interpersonal skills. Other types of skills also play a role in the hiring decision but are less important, and can therefore not easily compensate for a lack of occupation-specific human capital and interpersonal skills.
ISSN:0272-7757
1873-7382
DOI:10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.07.001