Incongruent skills and experiences in online labor market

  • Yan FU*
  • , Nan LI
  • , Juan FENG
  • , Qiang YE
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

Abstract

In online labor markets (OLMs), employers evaluate job applicants based on the published information in their profiles. In this study, we empirically investigate how applicants’ skill information as well as their previous experiences affect employers’ hiring decisions when considering the heterogeneity of online labor markets. We find that (1) employers prefer job applicants with more incongruent skills in low-skill industries, but not in high-skill industries; (2) job applicants’ experiences attenuate employers’ price sensitivity on making hiring decisions in both high-skill industries and low-skill industries. Our findings provide a different perspective from the prior literature on OLMs by considering the labor market heterogeneity, i.e. high-skill industries and low-skill industries. We also provide new insights into employers’ assessment on job applicants’ skill and experience information.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101025
JournalElectronic Commerce Research and Applications
Volume45
Early online date19 Dec 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

This research is supported by the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission [UIM/384], Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant 11509419], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71850013], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71532004], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 91846301], the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi, China [Grant 20194BCJ22019].

Keywords

  • Applicant experiences
  • Applicant skills
  • Labor market heterogeneity
  • Online labor markets

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