Essays on Entrepreneurial Joiners and How to Recruit Them
Abstract
Recruiting talent is arguably one of the most significant challenges facing entrepreneurs today. The ability to find and acquire high quality human resources is particularly critical for a start-up’s ability to survive and grow. However, start-ups are often disadvantaged in the labor market because they lack financial capital, reputation, and stability. While practitioners have repeatedly claimed that recruitment is one of the biggest challenges they face, little research has explored the question of how start-ups can better recruit employees. To understand how start-ups can better recruit employees, it is important to approach the question from both the employers’ and employees’ perspectives. This dissertation follows this approach.
One of the factors that make it difficult for entrepreneurship research on recruitment to advance is the fact that the few potentially relevant studies are scattered over multiple disciplines, such as psychology, economics, strategic management, human resources management, and entrepreneurship. Therefore, Essay 1 (Chapter 2) provides a thorough review of the literature related to entrepreneurial recruitment. After discussing the anecdotal evidence around the importance of recruitment, I categorize the studies into those that take the perspective of 1) employers, and 2) employees, then provide a synthesis of the studies and directions for future research.
One of the challenges associated with entrepreneurial recruitment is the presence of information asymmetry where employers and employees have different information. Essay 2 (Chapter 3) takes the perspective of employers and examines how start-ups can signal their quality to jobseekers to overcome information asymmetry. Specifically, a series of randomized laboratory experiments is used to study whether the level of prestige associated with the founder can increase the attractiveness of a start-up to jobseekers, and if so, whether founder prestige signals founder ability or venture quality.
Essay 3 (Chapter 4) takes the perspective of employees and examines how working for a start-up differs from working for an established firm or pursuing entrepreneurship. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates, I examine the number of roles undertaken by individuals in different occupational groups, and study how the number of roles relates to earnings and job satisfaction for the three groups.