Voluntary quality disclosure in the Labour market

We study the transmission by jobseekers to prospective employers of information about their own quality. Data from the UK website Monster.co.uk suggests around one-third-of recent graduates opt not to reveal their degree classification, an important measure of academic quality, to employers. To test how employers react to such non-disclosure, we ran a natural field experiment. We constructed CVs supposedly belonging to recent graduates and varied the information provided about their degree classifications. The CVs were used to make 12,301 applications for graduate jobs advertised on Monster.co.uk between 2019 and 2021, with success measured by the rate of positive responses from employers. Applications leaving classification undisclosed were significantly more successful than those disclosing the lowest possible classification. This suggests limited adverse inference is drawn from missing information. We discuss our results with reference to classic ‘unravelling’ theory, in which undisclosed information is treated with full scepticism and all but the very worst quality information is voluntarily transmitted.