Student internships and employment opportunities after graduation: A field experiment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102141Get rights and content
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Abstract

Internships during tertiary education have become substantially more common over the past decades in many industrialised countries. This study examines the impact of a voluntary intra-curricular internship experience during university studies on the probability of being invited to a job interview. To estimate a causal relationship, we conducted a randomised field experiment in which we sent 1248 fictitious, but realistic, resumes to real job openings. We find that applicants with internship experience have, on average, a 12.6% higher probability of being invited to a job interview.

Keywords

Internship
Hiring
Field experiment
Human capital
Signalling

JEL

I21
J23
J24
C93

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