  In this paper we revisit the basic variant of the classical secretary
problem. We propose a new approach in which we separate between an agent that
evaluates the secretary performance and one that has to make the hiring
decision. The evaluating agent (the sender) signals the quality of the
candidate to the hiring agent (the receiver) who must make a decision. Whenever
the two agents' interests are not fully aligned, this induces an information
transmission (signaling) challenge for the sender. We study the sender's
optimization problem subject to persuasiveness constraints of the receiver for
several variants of the problem.
  Our results quantify the loss in performance for the sender due to online
arrival. We provide optimal and near-optimal persuasive mechanisms that recover
at least a constant fraction of a natural utility benchmark for the sender. The
separation of evaluation and decision making can have a substantial impact on
the approximation results. While in some scenarios, techniques and results
closely mirror the conditions in the standard secretary problem, we also
explore conditions that lead to very different characteristics.
