The Role of CV Elements for Successful Labor-Market Entry

Which skills pay off in the labor market? And how can graduates signal these skills effectively to potential employers? To address these questions, we have conducted a survey experiment with nearly 600 human-resource managers of German firms who choose between CVs with randomized skill signals. We find that signals in all three studied domains - cognitive skills, social skills, and maturity - have a significant effect on being invited for a job interview. But the signals that prove relevant, expected, and credible differ by context, for example between apprenticeship applicants and college graduates. While grades and social skills are significant for both genders, males are particularly rewarded for maturity and females for IT and language skills.

Here you can find a short non-technical overview on this topic.

Research paper:

Skills, Signals, and Employability: An Experimental Investigation (with M. Piopiunik, G. Schwerdt, and L. Simon). European Economic Review 123: 103374, 2020

Non-technical contribution:

CV Elements that Will Get You a Job Interview (with M. Piopiunik, G. Schwerdt, and L. Simon). VOX, 23.2.2018

Material available only in German

Newspaper article:

Kompetenzen für den Arbeitsmarkt. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19.3.2018, p. 16

Non-technical contribution:

Die Bedeutung von Produktivitätssignalen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt: Ein Experiment mit Lebensläufen unter Personalleitern (with M. Piopiunik, G. Schwerdt, and L. Simon). ifo Schnelldienst 71 (4): 25-29, 2018