Does Familiarity with Vocational and Professional Education Shape Employers’ Educational Preferences in Hiring Processes?

Abstract

Especially in highly diversified education systems in which employers can choose among qualified applicants with different educational degrees, education is an important signal of an applicant’s unobserved characteristics. Using a factorial survey experiment among employers in Switzerland, we investigate their preferences regarding applicants’ education in the first stage of a hiring process. We find that for entry-level positions, applicants with an upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) degree have a higher probability for a job interview than those with general education. For the high-level position as sales manager, we also find that employers prefer applicants with tertiary professional education and training (PET), but not for the position as head of IT, where we observe a preference for university graduates. We contribute to the literature by providing evidence that employers who are more familiar with VET and PET in Switzerland show a stronger preference for applicants with such degrees. However, this finding only partly holds for the two IT positions, where familiarity has a weak effect on employers’ preferences. We conclude that employers highly value VET and PET degrees as an alter-native to general or academic degrees, but that policy makers should ensure employers’ familiarity with these degrees to enhance the labour market attainments of graduates.