Management professor presents research on job training at the White House
Dr. Mo Wang, R. Perry Frankland Professor of Management and Director of the Warrington College of Business’s Human Resource Research Center, gave an invited talk to the White House Social & Behavioral Sciences Team on Dec. 8.
The talk focused on Dr. Wang’s highly influential research on job loss and job search training programs. Dr. Wang presented scientific findings on the detrimental effects of job loss both in terms of financial and mental health outcomes. He also presented results from his evaluation study on the effectiveness of job search training programs. Based on data from 9,575 job seekers who participated in one of 47 previous studies, Dr. Wang showed that job seekers who participated in these training programs were 2.67 times more likely to gain employment than those who did not participate.
In addition, Dr. Wang showed that training programs were most effective when they include both development of job search-specific skills and enhancement of job search motivation. For example, job search training programs worked best when they taught job search skills, improved job seekers’ self-presentation, encouraged proactivity, promoted goal setting, enlisted social support and boosted self-efficacy.
During the talk, Dr. Wang also showed that the characteristics of job seekers mattered for the effectiveness of job search training programs. For example, job search training programs were most effective for younger (under 35) and older (over 50) job seekers than middle-aged job seekers. In addition, job search training programs were more effective for job seekers who were unemployed for a short amount of time (less than six months) than those who were unemployed for a longer than six months.
After the talk, Dr. Wang had informal discussions with members of the Team on issues related to battling unemployment, improving retirement savings, and smoothing undergraduates’ transition from college to work.
The White House Social & Behavioral Sciences Team includes leading behavioral scientists and innovators from across the country. It is charged to translate findings and methods from the social and behavioral sciences into improvements in federal policies and programs. It is organized under the National Science and Technology Council, and receives particular support from the Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) at the General Services Administration (GSA).
Dr. Wang joined Warrington in 2011. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Work, Aging and Retirement and an Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Psychology. He has been honored with numerous early career achievement awards from the American Psychological Association (2013), the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2013), the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (2012), the Academy of Management’s HR Division (2011) and Research Methods Division (2011), and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology (2009).
