There's an interesting article in today's WSJ titled "Economists Learn Matchmaker Role" (requires subscription). The article describes how last weekend, roughly 1000 soon-to-be-doctoral graduates descended on the American Economic Association convention in Chicago in the hopes of landing one of 2300 teaching jobs with one of the AEA's member universities.
Last year, constrained by time and space, there was a mismatch of candidates and jobs which resulted in AEA members not getting to interview enough of the "right" applicants for their open positions.
So this year, to improve the quality of interviews, the AEA introduced an electronic system modeled after the online dating site Cupid.com, which constrains male members from indiscriminately contacting female members by limiting the males to two "signals" per month.
Me, Spammer. You, Jane.
In the online dating world, women face a problem similar to employers: Men signal their interest in women by sending them electronic messages. But because it's so easy to send hundreds of emails, it's difficult for women to separate the spammers from the good prospects. If you have ever run a job posting on Monster, you know what I'm talking about. The spam factor can make a Monster posting more trouble than it's worth.
Cupid.com's solution to this problem was to allocate to each of its male members two electronic "roses" per month, which they could send along with messages to women they wanted to impress. The result? The scarcity of roses motivates suitors to be selective and serious -- and it has increased the suitor's chances of getting a reply by 35%. And while it's too early to tell how this system fared for AEA members, the event's organizers are bullish on its prospects.
As a Monster.com customer, I would like to see Monster implement something like this. Perhaps two "signals" is too few. But five or ten sounds reasonable. With job candidates, very often less is more.
Employers: What do you think?
