Hiring on education specificity across careers
Evidence from a factorial survey experiment with employers in Germany and England
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24227236 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luisa Burchartz (0000-0003-0098-1593, Utrecht University), Thijs Bol (University of Amsterdam) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-13 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0266-7215 • E-ISSN: 1468-2672 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/esr/jcag033 |
| OpenAlex | W7221653029 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
Prior observational research suggests that at the beginning of their careers, workers benefit from having specific education, as education that is closely linked to specific jobs. These relative payoffs to educational specificity, however, decline across the life-course. One central explanation for this is on the employer side: for late-career candidates, employers may perceive specific qualifications as a signal of outdated and inflexible skills. In this paper, we draw on novel data from a factorial survey experiment conducted with employers in Germany and England, to examine whether evaluations of specific education differ for early and late-career candidates. Moreover, we investigate the potential explanatory role of working and training histories. Our results show wide preferences for specific education over more general education, and this preference is strikingly similar for early and late-career candidates in the two countries. Still, for early-career candidates in Germany, we found particularly high evaluations of specificity for candidates with vocational training as compared to university graduates. Moreover, for late-career candidates, our results suggest that hiring agents differently value specificity in the two countries: in Germany, relevant work experience comes with a smaller specificity premium, whereas in England, on-the-job training can compensate for specific education.
early-career employees · employer preferences · England · Germany · hiring decisions · life course · On-the-job training · skills mismatch · university graduates · Vocational education · Work experience · Higher Education and Employability · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Lifecycle
How Institutions Evolve
How Factorial Survey Analysis Improves Our Understanding of Employer Preferences
Factorial Survey Experiments
Cultural and Human Capital Signals in Hiring—A Factorial Survey Experiment Across Contexts
Foreign Credential Recognition and Immigrants’ Chances of Being Hired for Skilled Jobs—Evidence from a Survey Experiment Among Employers
Why Does Education Matter to Employers in Different Institutional Contexts? A Vignette Study in England and the Netherlands
Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior
Vocational Education and Employment over the Life Cycle
Life-Course Differences in Occupational Mobility Between Vocationally and Generally Trained Workers in Germany
Vocational Education and Employment
Vocational Secondary Education
Skill evaluations over careers
Employer preferences for vocational over general education
Investment in Human Capital
The Vocational Education and Training System in England and Wales
Age Discrimination in Hiring Decisions
School-to-Work Linkages, Educational Mismatches, and Labor Market Outcomes
System of Professions
Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do
Closure and matching payoffs from college majors
Asset specificity, institutional complementarities and the variety of skill regimes in coordinated market economies
Innovations in Experimental Design in Attitude Surveys
Labour Market Effects of General and Vocational Education over the Life-Cycle and across Time
Why Are Employers Put Off by Long Spells of Unemployment
Occupational Closure and Wage Inequality in Germany and the United Kingdom
What does successful university graduation signal to employers? A factorial survey experiment on sheepskin effects
Vocational education, general education, and on-the-job learning over the life cycle
Vocational education, tertiary education, and skill use across career stages
School-to-Work Linkages in the United States, Germany, and France
The Payoff to Skill in the Third Industrial Revolution
Why Do Some Occupations Pay More than Others? Social Closure and Earnings Inequality in the United States
Higher education non-completion, employers, and labor market integration
Vocational education and employment over the life course using a new measure of occupational specificity
| Highly cited | No |
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