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Secretary Problems with Competing Employers

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Internet and Network Economics (WINE 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4286))

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Abstract

In many decentralized labor markets, job candidates are offered positions at very early stages in the hiring process. It has been argued that these early offers are an effect of the competition between employers for the best candidate. This work studies the timing of offers in a theoretical model based on the classical secretary problem. We consider a secretary problem with multiple employers and study the equilibria of the induced game. Our results confirm the observation of early offers in labor markets: for several classes of strategies based on optimal stopping theory, as the number of employers grows, the timing of the earliest offer decreases.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA

    Nicole Immorlica & Mohammad Mahdian

  2. UC Berkeley Computer Science Division, Cornell University Computer Science Department,  

    Robert Kleinberg

Authors
  1. Nicole Immorlica
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  2. Robert Kleinberg
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  3. Mohammad Mahdian
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500, Rio, Patras, Greece

    Paul Spirakis

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, CY-1678, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Marios Mavronicolas

  3. R.A. Computer Technology Institute, N. Kazantzakis Str., University Campus, 26500, Rio–Patra, Greece

    Spyros Kontogiannis

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Immorlica, N., Kleinberg, R., Mahdian, M. (2006). Secretary Problems with Competing Employers. In: Spirakis, P., Mavronicolas, M., Kontogiannis, S. (eds) Internet and Network Economics. WINE 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4286. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11944874_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11944874_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68138-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68141-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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