Searching, hiring and labour market conditions

This paper attempts to investigate how employers' recruitment strategies (i n terms of the recruitment method used and the applicants' characteristics) change in response to different conditions on the relevant regional Labour market. Our empirical results show that the hiring of unemployed candidates and the use of the public employment service are events more likely to happen in a slack regional labour market. Moreover, the use of advertisements and the hiring of already-employed job seekers are more Likely to occur in the pres ence of excess demand on the relevant regional Labour market. This supports the view that shifts in recruitment strategies may be driven by cyclical fluctuations in expected variations (in both the size and compo sition) of the pool of potential applicants, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.