The Temp Secretary Problem

Amos Fiat, Ilia Gorelik, Haim Kaplan, Slava Novgorodov

Abstract: We consider a generalization of the secretary problem where contracts are temporary, and for a fixed duration γ. This models online hiring of temporary employees, or online auctions for re-usable resources. The problem is related to the question of finding a large independent set in a random unit interval graph.