Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/236514 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14483
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
How do college non-completers list schooling on their resumes? The negative signal of not completing might outweigh the positive signal of attending but not persisting. If so, job-seekers might hide non-completed schooling on their resumes. To test this we match resumes from an online jobs board to administrative educational records. We find that fully one in three job-seekers who attended college but did not earn a degree omit their only post-secondary schooling from their resumes. We further show that these are not casual omissions but are strategic decisions systematically related to schooling characteristics, such as selectivity and years of enrollment. We also find evidence of lying, and show which degrees listed on resumes are most likely untrue. Lastly, we discuss implications. We show not only that this implies a commonly held assumption, that employers perfectly observe schooling, does not hold, but also that we can learn about which college experiences students believe are most valued by employers.
Subjects: 
signaling
resume
employer learning
statistical discrimination
jobs board
JEL: 
J01
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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