Studying Abroad as a Sorting Criterion in the Recruitment Process: A Field Experiment Among German Employers

As the experience of studying abroad can signal general and transnational human capital, it is considered to be increasingly important for professional careers, particularly in the context of economies’ internationalization. However, studies using graduate surveys face problems of self-selection and studies on employers’ opinions face problems of social desirability. To overcome endogeneity problems and to investigate the employers’ decisions directly, a particular field experimental design of a correspondence test was applied. Two hundred thirty-one applications of a real student with systematically varied studying abroad and professional working experience were randomly sent out for true internship offers of German employers. The time provided for the response and invitations for job interviews was measured, and additional publicly available information on the employers were collected. Results show that studying abroad decreases the days required until response and slightly increases the probability of invitation. However, at least in this field experiment, studying abroad is considered to be more of a sorting criterion by the employers with foreign branches than by those without.