Do Informal Referrals Lead to Better Matches? Evidence from a Firm’s Employee Referral System
利用一家美国企业的员工推荐数据，研究发现推荐入职者更易被录用、起薪更高但优势随时间消失、任职期更长，且低技能岗位推荐效应更强。
Using a new firm-level data set that includes explicit information on referrals by current employees, we investigate the hiring process and the relationships among referrals, match quality, wage trajectories, and turnover for a single US corporation and test various predictions of theoretical models of labor market referrals. We find that referred candidates are more likely to be hired; experience an initial wage advantage, which dissipates over time; and have longer tenure in the firm. Further, the variances of the referred and nonreferred wage distributions converge over time. The observed referral effects appear to be stronger at lower skill levels. The data also permit analysis of the role of referrer-referee pair characteristics.