Success and failure in the operational recruitment process : contrasting the outcomes of search

Following microeconomic theory, every vacancy should be filled by appropriate manpower after a certain time. However, from an empirical point of view it is evident that vacancies remain unfilled as establishments cancel their search for a suitable applicant. The German Job Vacancy Survey (JVS) is a representative survey of job offers for the entire German economy and provides information about the search and matching processes for both the establishments' most recent hires and for failures in the recruitment processes. The analysis is based on a binary explanatory variable, resulting from the interaction of individual successful and unsuccessful search processes (cancellation probability). Our results show that with increasing recruitment duration, the number of search cancellations becomes more likely. Moreover, the results indicate that the probability of a search cancellation is strongly linked to the characteristics that an applicant must provide and to the way the search is organised.