Applications and Interviews: Firms' Recruiting Decisions in a Frictional Labor Market

I develop a directed search model of the labor market in which firms choose a recruiting intensity, determining the number of applicants they will interview. Interviewing applicants is costly but reveals their productivity, allowing the firm to hire better workers. I characterize the equilibrium and find that the uniqueness and cyclicality of recruiting intensity crucially depend on parameter values. Calibration of the model to the US labor market indicates a multiplicity of the equilibrium. An increase in aggregate productivity---given selection of a particular equilibrium---causes recruiting intensity to move counter to unemployment, while a shock to the equilibrium selection rule predicts the opposite pattern.