Livia Alfonsi, Harvard Business School
Seminar
Date: Thursday 16 May 2024
Time: 10.00 – 11.30
Location: IIES Seminar Room
Meet Your Future: Experimental Evidence on the Labor Market Effects of Mentors
with Mary Namubiru and Sara Spaziani
Can personalized mentorship by experienced workers rectify labor market misconceptions
among young job seekers, ultimately enhancing their labor market trajectories? To answer
this question, we designed and randomized “Meet Your Future”, a mentorship program im-
plemented among 1,112 vocational students undergoing school-to-work transitions in urban Uganda.
among young job seekers, ultimately enhancing their labor market trajectories? To answer
this question, we designed and randomized “Meet Your Future”, a mentorship program im-
plemented among 1,112 vocational students undergoing school-to-work transitions in urban Uganda.
The program improved participants’ labor market outcomes. Relative to the control, mentored students were 27% more likely to work three months after graduation; after
one year, they earned 18% more.
one year, they earned 18% more.
Call transcripts from mentorship sessions and survey data reveal that mentorship primarily improved outcomes through information about entry level jobs and labor market dynamics, and not through job referrals, information about specific vacancies, or through building search capital.
Consistent with this finding, mentored students revise downward their overly optimistic beliefs about starting wages and revise upward beliefs about the returns to experience.
As a result, they lower their reservation wages and turn down fewer job offers. The results emphasizes the role of distorted beliefs among job seekers in prolonging youth unemployment and proposes a cost effective and scalable policy with an estimated internal rate of return of 300%.
Last updated: May 9, 2024
Source: IIES