Research | Seyeon Kim

Seyeon Kim. “Sorting into Startups: Unpacking Supply‑ and Demand‑Side Dynamics in Hiring.”

In Preparation for Submission
Using a proprietary dataset of 7 million job applications and interview records from a Korean digital hiring platform (2015–2024), my job market paper disentangles how applicant and employer behaviors jointly shape who works for startups. I find that both highly and lower-credentialed candidates gravitate toward startups—but to different types and through distinct mechanisms. I introduce a 2×2 framework of targeted vs broad choices exhibited by job seekers and/or employers and find that highly credentialed candidates match with prestige-signaling young firms through mutual selection, while lower-credentialed candidates are hired by small startups that still prefer higher-credentialed applicants but cast a wide net out. The study presents novel insights into applicant and employer behavior, sorting mechanisms across the hiring funnel, and heterogeneity among startups. Doing so reconciles competing portrayals of startup hiring and highlights how symbolic quality signals shape talent flows into early-stage firms.

Seyeon Kim. “From Founder to Follower: The Return Journey to Paid Employment.”

In Preparation for Submission
I use text network analysis to investigate how employers interpret entrepreneurial experience versus conventional employment. While prior research tends to assume uniformly negative beliefs about former founders, I collect and analyze open-ended employer evaluations of simulated resumes to uncover how such beliefs are structured. Using topic co-occurrence networks and community detection, I find that beliefs about employees tend to cluster cleanly—positive traits like leadership, competence, and stability co-occur, while negative ones remain separate. In contrast, founder resumes evoke more cognitively complex and ambivalent evaluations. Founder resumes activate similar positive traits such as initiative, but these often co-occur with concerns about self-orientation or defiance of authority. These findings suggest that founder experience invites more interpretive ambiguity than prior research has captured, and that the meaning of the same signal may shift depending on the evaluative context.

Seyeon Kim and Jon Atwell. “Bundled Signals and Hiring Risk: Experimental Evidence on the Entrepreneur-to-Employee Transition.” — running pilot experiments
Kylie J Hwang and Seyeon Kim. “Attracting Talent When You're the Underdog: Startups and Labor Market Signaling.” — data analyses
Seyeon Kim. “Micro-Dynamics of Job Search: How Feedback and Perceived Ability Shape Search Intensity and Direction.” — early stage (ideation/theorizing)
Seyeon Kim. “Beyond the Homogeneous Firm: Theorizing the Effects of Firm Age and Size on Hiring.” — early stage
Seyeon Kim. “Experience, Education, and the Role of Startups as Career Bridges.” — early stage