I don’t think this is an adequate account of the selection effects we find in the job market. Consider:
We don’t expect people to disappear from the job market just because they’re the best. They disappear from the market when they’ve found a match, so that they and their counterpart become confident in the relationship’s durability and shift from explore to exploit, investing in the relationship for the long term. The pool of candidates is comprised both of those who outgrew their previous position or relationship, and those who got fired or dumped. Insofar as the market suffers from information asymmetries or different rates of performance growth between partners, we should expect lots of participation in the market by high-quality people seeking to move up from a previous mismatch with a low-quality partner.
Low-quality employees get discouraged and exit the job market in their field, while low-quality businesses go bankrupt. The people who aren’t dating include both those who are in relationships (which only means they’re well-matched and better than no partner at all) and those who are too stressed or unhealthy or discouraged to even try to date. Participating in the market is a costly signal that you consider yourself hireable/dateable or are successful and ready to grow.
Searching widely for the next job may be a sign of vigor and open-mindedness—the people putting out the most applications are those most determined to succeed.
One factor that is discouraging to consider is how switching costs and the cost of participation in the market intersect.
If it’s cheap to look for a partner, costly to break up, and a lot of information asymmetry, then there’ll always be a set of terrible partners who are always on the hunt (because it’s cheap), who have a real chance of finding a better match (because of information asymmetry), and who can expect to keep the good match around for a while (because of high switching costs). The US military is an example. It has a massive advertising budget and a huge manpower shortage, so it’s always on the hunt for recruits. There’s a big difference between its heroic and self-actualizing self-portrayal and the dismal and dehumanizing experience many soldiers report. And once you’re in, you can’t just leave. The existence of these entities in any market with these properties is a discouraging sign when considering candidate jobs/partners at random. If you find that participation in the market is cheap or that sharing negative information about a candidate is discouraged (i.e. a powerful politician who could retaliate against anyone accusing them of wrongdoing), then learning this information should make you downgrade your expectations of the candidate’s quality.
That being said, it may be that seeking a job via responding to job applications online is a sign of a lower-tier candidate, all else equal. Whether a writer submits to editors independently or via an agent may say a lot about the writer’s quality, and whether a first date comes from an app, a recommendation from a friend, or flirtation at a party might say a lot about the potential romantic partner.
Yeah, it does not work absolutely. As you say, sometimes the incompetent people and companies disappear from the market; and sometimes for various reason the competent ones are looking for something new.
Yet, I would say that in my personal experience there seems to be a correlation: the bad jobs I had were often those where I responded to a printed job announcement (even if I responded to multiple postings and chose the job that seemed relatively best among them), and the good jobs I had were often those where people I knew actively approached me saying “hey, I have a great job, and we are currently looking for someone just like you”. (Or in one case, it was me calling my friends and asking: “hey, where are you working currently? is it an okay place? are you hiring?”.) From the opposite perspective, I have interview a few job candidates whose CVs seemed impressive, but their actual skills were somewhere around the Hello-World level. So it seems to me that responding to job announcements is indeed a lemon market for both sides.
I don’t think this is an adequate account of the selection effects we find in the job market. Consider:
We don’t expect people to disappear from the job market just because they’re the best. They disappear from the market when they’ve found a match, so that they and their counterpart become confident in the relationship’s durability and shift from explore to exploit, investing in the relationship for the long term. The pool of candidates is comprised both of those who outgrew their previous position or relationship, and those who got fired or dumped. Insofar as the market suffers from information asymmetries or different rates of performance growth between partners, we should expect lots of participation in the market by high-quality people seeking to move up from a previous mismatch with a low-quality partner.
Low-quality employees get discouraged and exit the job market in their field, while low-quality businesses go bankrupt. The people who aren’t dating include both those who are in relationships (which only means they’re well-matched and better than no partner at all) and those who are too stressed or unhealthy or discouraged to even try to date. Participating in the market is a costly signal that you consider yourself hireable/dateable or are successful and ready to grow.
Searching widely for the next job may be a sign of vigor and open-mindedness—the people putting out the most applications are those most determined to succeed.
One factor that is discouraging to consider is how switching costs and the cost of participation in the market intersect.
If it’s cheap to look for a partner, costly to break up, and a lot of information asymmetry, then there’ll always be a set of terrible partners who are always on the hunt (because it’s cheap), who have a real chance of finding a better match (because of information asymmetry), and who can expect to keep the good match around for a while (because of high switching costs). The US military is an example. It has a massive advertising budget and a huge manpower shortage, so it’s always on the hunt for recruits. There’s a big difference between its heroic and self-actualizing self-portrayal and the dismal and dehumanizing experience many soldiers report. And once you’re in, you can’t just leave. The existence of these entities in any market with these properties is a discouraging sign when considering candidate jobs/partners at random. If you find that participation in the market is cheap or that sharing negative information about a candidate is discouraged (i.e. a powerful politician who could retaliate against anyone accusing them of wrongdoing), then learning this information should make you downgrade your expectations of the candidate’s quality.
That being said, it may be that seeking a job via responding to job applications online is a sign of a lower-tier candidate, all else equal. Whether a writer submits to editors independently or via an agent may say a lot about the writer’s quality, and whether a first date comes from an app, a recommendation from a friend, or flirtation at a party might say a lot about the potential romantic partner.
Yeah, it does not work absolutely. As you say, sometimes the incompetent people and companies disappear from the market; and sometimes for various reason the competent ones are looking for something new.
Yet, I would say that in my personal experience there seems to be a correlation: the bad jobs I had were often those where I responded to a printed job announcement (even if I responded to multiple postings and chose the job that seemed relatively best among them), and the good jobs I had were often those where people I knew actively approached me saying “hey, I have a great job, and we are currently looking for someone just like you”. (Or in one case, it was me calling my friends and asking: “hey, where are you working currently? is it an okay place? are you hiring?”.) From the opposite perspective, I have interview a few job candidates whose CVs seemed impressive, but their actual skills were somewhere around the Hello-World level. So it seems to me that responding to job announcements is indeed a lemon market for both sides.