I think the scheme “prove you’re serious by spending one of your 10 limited applications”, similar to other schemes like “come to our office to apply in person”, is a kind of all-pay auction. People often self-organize into all-pay auctions: “all of you must spend something to compete, then one of you will get the prize”. Sports is a big example. The general problem with such auctions is that those who don’t win still lose something tangible for trying: time, money, effort, opportunity cost.
One nice thing about market prices is that they allow society to avoid the wastefulness of all-pay auctions. Only the buyer pays, not anyone else. If there are too many buyers, raise the price until there aren’t so many. If there are too many sellers, lower the price until there aren’t so many. But for that to work, the price must be allowed to truly float.
How does this look in the case of jobs? Offer a lower wage. Or if it’s a job where employee value grows with time at the company, like engineering, then offer lower wage at the start and then a gradual ramp: high enough that the employee isn’t tempted to leave, and low enough that the company isn’t tempted to fire. That’s what the market is for, negotiating these kinds of things.
As for what the government should do—how about a safety net? Healthcare not tied to jobs? Allow building more housing? Lots of things. It might end up reducing the resume pressure on companies, too.
Lowering the wage is only the right choice if too many qualified candidates are applying. If too many unqualified candidates apply, offering a lower wage is counterproductive, since that will filter out qualified candidates (who have other options and know the market prices).
My understanding is that the problem is unqualified candidate spam, so lowering wage wouldn’t help.
I’m not convinced “unqualified candidate spam” is the right category to draw. Both qualified and unqualified candidates send out lots of resumes today. It seems to me that putting a sacrificial gate will reduce the number of resumes, but the ratio of qualified:unqualified will stay mostly the same, determined by the ratio of qualified:unqualified candidates seeking jobs at any given time.
The real problem is more candidates chasing fewer jobs. The solutions to that are as I described: 1) make wages more floaty, 2) reduce pressure to find jobs. You could say there’s also 3) add more credible signals to make job search more informative and efficient. But given what happened with education, I’m skeptical. It turned into this clownshow where you spend years of your life, and go into lifelong debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to send the credible signal. This sours me on the whole signal thing, to be honest.
I think the crux here is that I actually do think this is mostly a problem of unqualified candidate spam, not too many qualified candidates.
In the age of zero-cost applications, qualified candidates apply to a targeted set of jobs so they can get the job they want most, then stop applying when they get one; but unqualified candidates apply to every job and keep doing it because they can’t pass interviews or quickly get fired. A gate like the one proposed in the post would reduce unqualified candidate spam by orders of magnitude while barely impacting qualified candidates.
Another way of looking at this is that companies aren’t stupid. If there actually was an excess of qualified candidates, they would absolutely take advantage of that by lowering wages.
I think the scheme “prove you’re serious by spending one of your 10 limited applications”, similar to other schemes like “come to our office to apply in person”, is a kind of all-pay auction. People often self-organize into all-pay auctions: “all of you must spend something to compete, then one of you will get the prize”. Sports is a big example. The general problem with such auctions is that those who don’t win still lose something tangible for trying: time, money, effort, opportunity cost.
One nice thing about market prices is that they allow society to avoid the wastefulness of all-pay auctions. Only the buyer pays, not anyone else. If there are too many buyers, raise the price until there aren’t so many. If there are too many sellers, lower the price until there aren’t so many. But for that to work, the price must be allowed to truly float.
How does this look in the case of jobs? Offer a lower wage. Or if it’s a job where employee value grows with time at the company, like engineering, then offer lower wage at the start and then a gradual ramp: high enough that the employee isn’t tempted to leave, and low enough that the company isn’t tempted to fire. That’s what the market is for, negotiating these kinds of things.
As for what the government should do—how about a safety net? Healthcare not tied to jobs? Allow building more housing? Lots of things. It might end up reducing the resume pressure on companies, too.
Lowering the wage is only the right choice if too many qualified candidates are applying. If too many unqualified candidates apply, offering a lower wage is counterproductive, since that will filter out qualified candidates (who have other options and know the market prices).
My understanding is that the problem is unqualified candidate spam, so lowering wage wouldn’t help.
I’m not convinced “unqualified candidate spam” is the right category to draw. Both qualified and unqualified candidates send out lots of resumes today. It seems to me that putting a sacrificial gate will reduce the number of resumes, but the ratio of qualified:unqualified will stay mostly the same, determined by the ratio of qualified:unqualified candidates seeking jobs at any given time.
The real problem is more candidates chasing fewer jobs. The solutions to that are as I described: 1) make wages more floaty, 2) reduce pressure to find jobs. You could say there’s also 3) add more credible signals to make job search more informative and efficient. But given what happened with education, I’m skeptical. It turned into this clownshow where you spend years of your life, and go into lifelong debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to send the credible signal. This sours me on the whole signal thing, to be honest.
I think the crux here is that I actually do think this is mostly a problem of unqualified candidate spam, not too many qualified candidates.
In the age of zero-cost applications, qualified candidates apply to a targeted set of jobs so they can get the job they want most, then stop applying when they get one; but unqualified candidates apply to every job and keep doing it because they can’t pass interviews or quickly get fired. A gate like the one proposed in the post would reduce unqualified candidate spam by orders of magnitude while barely impacting qualified candidates.
Another way of looking at this is that companies aren’t stupid. If there actually was an excess of qualified candidates, they would absolutely take advantage of that by lowering wages.