Seminario CEDE - Rafael Lalive

Looking for jobs is complicated and frustrating. We present the results of a randomised multi-treatment intervention offering jobseekers access to online tools aimed to improve the effectiveness of their job search. In one treatment arm, jobseekers have access to a purposely designed online job search platform that recommends vacancies by proximity with the jobseeker’s skill profile (Jobs-for-You, J4U ). The second treatment consists of online cognitive training sessions that help maintain crucial skills during unemployment (Cognition, COG). The intervention also includes a treatment arm with both the online platform and the cognitive training (J4U&COG) and a control group. We implemented the intervention in the Swiss cantons of Neuchatel and Vaud in 2021 and 2022. 

Results show that participants in both the J4U and COG group search jobs closer to their skill profiles than the control group, but only if they were mismatched in their previous jobs. For participants aged 35 or older, we find jobs more rapidly than the control group, and job finding increases primarily through J4U participants locating jobs in occupations they had not worked before entering unemployment, i.e. occupational mobility. Those participants with cognitive training (COG) tend to find higher skilled jobs more rapidly than the control group. Younger participants take longer to find jobs, mostly because they are less likely to return to the pre-unemployment occupation. We find no difference in outcomes between the group receiving the combined treatment J4U&COG and the controls, possibly because of a form of task congestion.