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Hiring on education specificity across careers: evidence from a factorial survey experiment with employers in Germany and England

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Prior observational research suggests that at the beginning of their careers, workers benefit from having specific education, as education that is closely linked to specific jobs. These relative payoffs to educational specificity, however, decline across the life-course. One central explanation for this is on the employer side: for late-career candidates, employers may perceive specific qualifications as a signal of outdated and inflexible skills. In this paper, we draw on novel data from a factorial survey experiment conducted with employers in Germany and England, to examine whether evaluations of specific education differ for early and late-career candidates. Moreover, we investigate the potential explanatory role of working and training histories. Our results show wide preferences for specific education over more general education, and this preference is strikingly similar for early and late-career candidates in the two countries. Still, for early-career candidates in Germany, we found particularly high evaluations of specificity for candidates with vocational training as compared to university graduates. Moreover, for late-career candidates, our results suggest that hiring agents differently value specificity in the two countries: in Germany, relevant work experience comes with a smaller specificity premium, whereas in England, on-the-job training can compensate for specific education.
DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcag033
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $5,323
OpenAlex ID: W7221653029
FWCI:
Cites: 41
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Related to: 10