3,487 youth applied for the program. After firms had indicated their demand for interns, these jobs were mapped to specializations of study. For some positions there was a single specialization that was relevant (e.g. a firm requesting interns for a dentistry position had this job mapped just to applicants who had studied dentistry), while for others several specializations were considered suitable (e.g. for firms requiring interns in business administration positions, the specializations of business administration, office management, and management were all considered suitable). Based on this potential demand, SMEPS randomly chose a sample of 500 applicants with probability proportion to demand.
The 500 applicants invited to the two-day training were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Random assignment effectively occurred within strata defined by specialization and city. In all there are 231 such strata, but many of these contain few individuals in specializations with no market demand, so only 39 strata were used.
Finally, additional individuals who had not gone through the two-day training were randomly selected to boost numbers for some positions. Randomization was done internally at SMEPS using Excel. The resulting experimental sample consists of 583 youth, of which 430 (318 male, 112 female) were allocated to treatment, and 153 (105 male, 48 female) to control.
