Analysis of the strategy ``hiring above the \(m\)-th best candidate'' (Q486994)

A hiring problem is considered where hiring decisions must be made on-line and under uncertainty. This means that one must decide whether to hire a candidate or not and this irreversible decision only depends on the relative ranks of candidates seen till the time of decision and not even the total number of candidates is known. The research concentrates on a particular hiring strategy called ``hiring above the \(m\)th best''. After having defined the hiring parameters characterizing the behaviour of the hiring strategy, explicit formulas are given for the probability distributions of almost all hiring parameters considered. Furthermore, a connection between the hiring strategy considered and the seating plan of the Chinese restaurant process is studied.