The Cost of Specialist Signaling: Visibility and Opportunity of Online Profiles

• In Event: 40412 - Labor Markets

Abstract

Online profiles on platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub, and Upwork make workers’ skills and experiences publicly visible, creating career opportunities even without direct job applications. Since workers cannot tailor their profiles to specific positions, this constraint raises a key question about self-presentation: How does signaling as a specialist or generalist affect the visibility and opportunities of online profiles? Although existing studies have explored the tensions between specialists and generalists, theorizing and estimating the signaling effects has been challenging, as workers signaling as specialists are likely to possess more focused skills. To address this puzzle in the context of online profiles, we draw on signal-based and multistage perspectives, theorizing that specialist signaling leads to greater visibility but fewer opportunities compared to generalist signaling. Leveraging an unannounced change in the design of a platform that captures exogenous shifts in the perception of specialization while keeping workers’ skills and niches constant, we find that specialist signaling increased views by 33.1%, but the conversion rate from views to interview offers was 74.6% lower, resulting in a 58.7% decrease in interview offers. Our findings provide evidence that specialist signaling carries a true "signaling" cost in online profiles—one that may initially increase visibility but ultimately leads to fewer opportunities.

Authors

• Marco Dongil Jang, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• Alan Benson, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management

• Ming D. Leung, University of California-Irvine