Adapting to Scarcity: Job Search and Recruiting Across Occupational Boundaries

The paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar investigates how recruiters shape occupational mobility in the labor market. Prior research has emphasized workers’ decisions, largely overlooking the role of firms. The authors leverage unique click data from a recruitment platform. The identification strategy exploits the fact that the authors can see the same applicant information that recruiters observe, making selection on observables plausible. The paper finds that recruiters strongly favor candidates whose current occupation matches the advertised job. Nevertheless, non-matching candidates also have substantial hiring probabilities. Finally, the authors show that recruiters adjust their hiring patterns to occupational labor market tightness partially offseting occupational scarcity. The paper suggests that recruiter decisions account for roughly one third of occupational transitions.