Analyzing ranking strategies to characterize competition in the co-operative education job market

Co-operative education is a form of work-integrated learning that includes academic study and paid work experience. This provides new learning opportunities for students and a talent pipeline for employers, but also requires participation in a competitive job market. This paper studies competition through a unique dataset from a large North American co-operative program, in which students and employers rank each other after a round of interviews, then a matching algorithm assigns students to jobs based on the ranks, and finally, they evaluate each other at the end of the work term. The results suggest that less experienced students and small employers are more strongly affected by competition and consider more options in their rankings, whereas senior students and large employers often only identify their top choice. Additionally, competition appears to affect satisfaction since students and employers give higher work term evaluations when matched with their top choice.