Extended Data Fig. 2: Validation of research design.
From: Monitoring hiring discrimination through online recruitment platforms
a, Percentage point effects and associated cluster-robust 95% confidence intervals of ethnicity on the likelihood that the contact button has been clicked conditional on profile visit (n = 254,975). The sample is restricted to non-registered recruiters who do not observe the nationality and name of jobseekers. Controlling for detailed language skills of jobseekers, these recruiters should not be able to infer candidates’ ethnicity. Standard errors are clustered at recruiter level. The null hypothesis that all ethnicity coefficients are jointly zero is not rejected (P = 0.93 (two-sided F-test)). b, Comparison of our baseline results that are based on the click on the contact button (in blue) with analogous regressions with outcome variables that are more direct signals of contact attempts by recruiters (n = 3,251,303). Dots with horizontal lines indicate point estimates with cluster-robust 95% confidence intervals from OLS regression. The dependent variable in the model ‘mail or print button’ is a binary indicator if a recruiter clicked on the hyperlink of the email address of the candidate or on the button ‘print candidate profile’ available on the profile page (n = 3,251,263 profile views). These click events happen in only 3.3% and 4.8% of profile visits, respectively. The dependent variable in the model ‘contact button (60 sec)’ is a binary indicator equal to one if a recruiter clicked on the contact button and subsequently stayed on the profile of the respective jobseeker for at least 60 s—a sign that the recruiter contacted the jobseeker immediately, possibly via phone or email. This happens in 27.3% of all contact attempts. The coefficients are normalized with the mean of the outcome variables to represent percent effects.
