Searching, ranking and hiring

This paper analyses employers' recruitment strategies (in terms of search channel used, and applicants' characteristics) in response to different conditions on the relevant regional labour market. In particular we were able to formulate two hypotheses on the nature of the adjustments: (1) The use of the labour exchange office and the hiring of unemployed candidates are events more likely to happen in a slack regional labour market. The use of advertisement and the hiring of already employed job seekers are more likely to occur in presence of excess demand on the relevant regional labour market; (2) The process leading to the choice of the recruitment channel and the outcome of the recruitment process in terms of the characteristics of the hired applicants are correlated. The recruitment behaviour we find in our data is consistent with a theoretical ranking model (Blanchard and Diamond 1994) but it less likely to be induced by endogenous creation of good jobs during periods of excess demand as modelled in Pissarides (1994). In fact the composition of the educational requirements among the vacant jobs appears to be rather constant. This support the view that shifts in recruitment