Testing the Potential for Online Labor Markets and Job Matching to Provide New Opportunities to the Poor and Vulnerable

This study uses the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nigeria as suitable settings to experimentally test several features of job search and job matching services in low-income countries designed to reduce the costs associated with labor market frictions through: (i) an online jobs posting boards (via a dedicated website) that leverages a traditional, two-day job fair, and seeks to reduce costs associated with job searchers by influencing job search behavior; (ii) a direct information provision intervention that seeks to provide to job candidates more credible and specific information about job openings through regular reminders via SMS phone messages; and (iii) a job matching intervention designed to match jobseekers with specific skill sets to hiring firms desiring those skills. This research will also include a set of sub-treatments designed to test specific channels of the main interventions (e.g., reservation wages and or reservation utility) and a women-specific intervention that pairs a subset of female job candidates with female recruiters and/or supervisors when and if a candidate is hired.