Not all UWV clients who receive unemployment benefit post their CVs on werk.nl. This prevents them from being found or matched for a job. Would it help to send them a reminder to their personal Work Folder as well as a text message? Yes it would: this experiment shows that five times more clients are then prompted to put their CV online, compared to clients who are not sent a reminder.

Why this experiment was conducted: missing CVs
25% of jobseekers on unemployment benefit who are asked to post their CVs online fail to do so. They can enter their CV details on werk.nl using an online format provided by UWV. Employers who are hiring view these CVs on the site and can contact suitable candidates directly. UWV consultants use the details in CVs on werk.nl to actively match jobseekers. With all the evidence pointing to CVs being instrumental in job hunting, we investigated how to encourage clients to put their information up on werk.nl.

Types of intervention: reminders via Work Folder and text messaging
Clients on unemployment benefit receive a task in their personal Work Folder on werk.nl prompting them to post their CV online. The behavioural analysis showed that a significant group neglects this, despite their desire to do it. Also, there is a large group that is not sufficiently convinced there is any added value in doing this and that prefers to use their own CV layout instead of the UWV format. It was therefore decided to send the prompting task once more to clients who had not posted their CV online two weeks after the task had expired, in combination with a reminder in their Work Folder. The reminders were worded in two different ways:
• a neutral version, simply reminding the client to post their CV online
• a version accentuating the personal interest for the client in posting their CV online As data indicates that people who fail to fill in their CV are, on average, less likely to log into their personal Work Folder, they were also sent a text message if their CV was still not active a week after receiving the reminder.

Method used: RCT
A randomised field experiment was conducted amongst 6,788 clients to measure the effectiveness of the reminders. Five distinct groups were employed:
• neutral reminder + text message
• neutral reminder + no text message
• reminder accentuating personal interest + text message
• reminder accentuating personal interest + no text message
• no reminder (control group)

Result obtained: Five times as many CVs posted online
The reminders led to nearly five times more active CVs being posted on werk.nl. Two weeks after UWV sent a reminder, 26.1% of jobseekers posted a CV, averaged across the four versions. The corresponding figure without a reminder is 5.7%. This difference is significant. Jobseekers who received a neutral reminder plus text message a week later (if they had taken no action by then) were most likely to post their CV on werk.nl. They did so more often than those who received the message accentuating personal interest plus text message (27.6% vs. 24.5%). This difference too is significant.

Impact: increasing likelihood of finding work earlier
Sending a reminder and text message can increase the total number of people who post their CV on werk.nl: from roughly 75% at the moment to approximately 80%. This translates to an additional 2,500 people posting their CVs every month in response to the reminder, against a background of 36,500 new unemployment benefit claimants on average every month. It is expected that this will increase the likelihood of jobseekers finding work (sooner).

Source: https://www.binnl.nl/home+-+en/knowledge/publications/bin+nl+publications/HandlerDownloadFiles.ashx?idnv=2719979