00:00:03
There used to be an old joke about kind of the best way to hire was just pick up all
00:00:07
the resumes, throw them down the stairs, choose the ones on the top step because you want
00:00:11
to hire people who are lucky.
00:00:12
When you've got this many applications, that's starting to feel like a rational strategy.
00:00:16
Welcome to the Ripple Effect, the podcast that takes you on a journey through the minds
00:00:21
of Wharton faculty.
00:00:22
I'm your host, Dan Loney, and in each episode, we'll be diving deep into the inspiration
00:00:26
behind the groundbreaking research that Wharton professors have conducted and exploring how
00:00:32
their findings resonate with the world today.
00:00:34
Many college students will be graduating in the very near future, and that means they
00:00:39
will be headed off to the workforce, but what is research telling us about strategies behind
00:00:45
job search starting that first career, and how is AI playing a role in this process?
00:00:51
Pleasure to be joined by Matthew Bidwell, professor of management here at the Wharton
00:00:55
School.
00:00:56
Matthew, always fun to talk to you.
00:00:57
How are you, sir?
00:00:58
I'm very well.
00:00:58
Thanks, Dan.
00:00:59
How has it kind of evolved, especially maybe in the last decade or so, with students graduating
00:01:04
college and being able to successfully transition into the workforce, what has changed along
00:01:10
the way?
00:01:11
I mean, when you talk about the last decade, obviously it's been a, I guess we could say
00:01:14
a big decade, right?
00:01:15
You had COVID, which was hugely disruptive.
00:01:19
We're now out of that, we're kind of now in this kind of weird AI, kind of feels like
00:01:25
an AI prologue to me, right?
00:01:27
We kind of, you know, it's on the horizon, it hasn't yet struck in full force.
00:01:32
So I think it's continually evolving.
00:01:34
I mean, on the one hand, we've got these kinds of business cycles that are shaping a lot.
00:01:40
So you know, we went from, you know, eight, nine years ago, it was a great time to get
00:01:45
a job for a college graduate, COVID through a brief spanner in the works, then it was
00:01:51
great for a couple of years.
00:01:52
Whereas the last two, three years have been hard.
00:01:54
And so you've got that going on.
00:01:57
I think what it takes to get a job as well, for a while, I think for at least kind of
00:02:03
people coming out of some of the elite schools, there were a few organizations that hoovered
00:02:09
up a lot of people, like the big consulting firms hired a lot of people, the big tech
00:02:13
firms hired a lot of people, they've really pulled back over the last couple of years to
00:02:19
a dramatic degree.
00:02:20
And so I think it has become more fragmented.
00:02:23
I would say it's always a difficult time for people, right?
00:02:28
You don't have a track record, you don't have a background, you're trying to figure out
00:02:32
what you want to do, it's not clear who's going to hire you.
00:02:36
And so I think it has often been a kind of trial and error experimentation, throw a lot
00:02:41
of stuff out there, see what hits kind of approach to job seeking for a lot of people.
00:02:45
And I think that has got even more so in recent years because of the economy, because of who's
00:02:51
hiring and then obviously also technological shifts as well, which we can talk about.
00:02:55
Well, okay.
00:02:56
So then doesn't the tough scenario you're talking about as kids are graduating, does
00:03:02
it put even more importance on looking at an internship while you're in college to kind
00:03:10
of set the groundwork for that potential career when you're out of school?
00:03:15
I think it probably helps.
00:03:16
I mean, I'm sure it helps.
00:03:18
That's got tougher too.
00:03:20
Right.
00:03:20
I mean, I think I hear from a lot of people, numbers of internships are dramatically down
00:03:24
over the last couple of years.
00:03:26
The sense of why hire an intern, we can get an agent to do it instead.
00:03:30
It gives you a track record.
00:03:31
Maybe it helps you to start build those relationships with organizations.
00:03:36
It's certainly something that I strongly recommend, but in some ways you're just taking the same
00:03:42
problem and shifting it back one notch, which is you've still got the, how do I figure
00:03:46
out what to do?
00:03:47
How do I persuade somebody to hire me happening even earlier in your career?
00:03:51
I will say to some extent, I think it's slightly sad as an old person who comes from an era
00:03:57
where these internships weren't so important, right?
00:04:00
The idea that as soon as you get to college, you're worrying about where do I get an internship
00:04:06
already?
00:04:06
And that's starting to take over a lot of the university experience.
00:04:09
I mean, it's not obviously great, but I think if you're looking to start a career, it is
00:04:15
good advice.
00:04:16
All right.
00:04:16
So you mentioned artificial intelligence and we know that AI is impacting companies in
00:04:21
how they're going to be doing their work and potentially who and how many they're going
00:04:26
to be hiring in the future.
00:04:27
But in terms of that process of graduates, people going out in the workforce, AI is probably
00:04:34
helping them kind of develop the materials that they need to try and present to companies
00:04:38
to be able to get that job, I assume.
00:04:41
Yeah, very much so.
00:04:42
But in a way that it makes it easier for each individual.
00:04:45
I'm not sure it makes it easier for them as a group because the problem is it is now
00:04:50
so easy to apply to companies all of the time that you might previously have taken to tailor
00:04:57
your resume, tailor your cover letter, that sort of thing.
00:05:00
You can do almost automatically.
00:05:01
So yeah, for me individually, that's great.
00:05:04
But the problem that I run into is now because it's easy for everybody, employers are just
00:05:09
inundated with applications.
00:05:12
And so how you even get your application read, how you stand out from the crowd, I think
00:05:18
is getting harder and harder.
00:05:21
And so we feel we're in a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma here where kind of just
00:05:27
everybody is swamped.
00:05:29
And it makes sense to be sending out hundreds of applications.
00:05:32
I recently spoke to a young person, a friend who said he applied to 500 jobs recently.
00:05:39
But you can do that now.
00:05:42
But the problem is when everybody's applying for 500 jobs, as an employer, I mean, might
00:05:48
as well.
00:05:48
I mean, there used to be an old joke about kind of the best way to hire was just pick
00:05:51
up all the resumes, throw them down the stairs, choose the ones on the top step because you
00:05:55
want to hire people who are lucky.
00:05:57
You know, when you've got this many applications, that's starting to feel like a rational strategy.
00:06:01
Does it then put more focus on the personal touch of what you put into that application,
00:06:07
that process?
00:06:08
I mean, obviously, everybody wants to use AI, but don't you have to really focus on
00:06:12
that little element that makes you, you, that you're the reason why this company should
00:06:18
hire you?
00:06:20
Yeah, but nobody's going to read it.
00:06:22
Right.
00:06:22
And the problem is, I'm sure ChatGPT can put in those personal touches just as well as
00:06:29
you can.
00:06:30
I mean, the story that I've heard, to be honest, mainly from academics speculating about this
00:06:35
is, we kind of think that personal referrals might get more important, that I think this
00:06:42
question of just how do I even get somebody to look at my application when they're in
00:06:47
That is becoming the real challenge, and so I suspect networking to the job is becoming
00:06:53
more important.
00:06:54
Exactly.
00:06:55
And that was what I was going to bring up because networking has been obviously an important
00:06:59
component of the job process for such a long period of time.
00:07:03
But it does sound like that personal connection you may have with an employee in the company
00:07:08
already or somebody who knows the CEO or CFO may play an even bigger role because there's
00:07:16
that connection, that personal connection, and it's not just ChatGPT that they're looking
00:07:20
at.
00:07:20
Yeah.
00:07:20
And again, it's the sort of thing where if you're a job seeker, this is absolutely what
00:07:24
you should be doing.
00:07:25
If you take a step back and say, is this a good thing?
00:07:28
No.
00:07:28
Right.
00:07:29
Because ultimately it just ends up privileging those people who have the connections and
00:07:33
excluding a lot of other people.
00:07:34
But yeah, if you're a college student looking for a job, network, network, network.
00:07:38
How then should college graduates think about the first job and what should be your expectations
00:07:44
potentially on being there length of period of time?
00:07:47
I mean, there used to be the old line of, you know, three years and move on.
00:07:50
And I don't know how much that still plays into the mix right now.
00:07:54
Most people don't stay that long in their first job and they never have.
00:07:59
I've been annoying my students recently with a study from the 1970s that found that young
00:08:04
men had about seven jobs in their first 10 years in the labor market.
00:08:08
I mean, it is normal for young people to move around.
00:08:11
The first job you get might not be ideal, right?
00:08:15
It might be not the kind of work you want to do.
00:08:16
It might not be a very good company.
00:08:18
And so if that's the case, you want to move up.
00:08:20
And frankly, the harder the labor market is, the more likely it is that you're not going
00:08:26
to get the right thing and you're going to want to move.
00:08:27
I mean, there is kind of evidence, you know, people who graduate in recessions end up in
00:08:32
not so good jobs initially.
00:08:34
And the ones that do well are the ones that are then prepared to kind of move up and go,
00:08:37
OK, I need to move out of it.
00:08:39
So, yeah, you probably do expect to move either because you don't get the right job because
00:08:43
it wasn't available.
00:08:44
Sometimes also, I mean, we make mistakes.
00:08:46
Most people think they want to do one thing.
00:08:49
They go out, they encounter work, they go, oh, my God, that was a terrible idea.
00:08:53
I know it's the case for me.
00:08:54
It's the case for a huge number of people.
00:08:56
And so, you know, I think the early years should be about exploration.
00:09:00
They're about trying to figure out where you fit.
00:09:03
If you discover your first job, you absolutely love it.
00:09:07
And there's lots of opportunities for growth.
00:09:08
Then sure, stay.
00:09:10
But that's not the usual.
00:09:13
Not what usually happens with people.
00:09:15
What about the component of developing skills while you're on the job?
00:09:19
It seems like a lot more companies are focusing on that as a component of keeping an employee
00:09:24
in place or maybe moving them up the ladder is that the skills that they learn while they're
00:09:30
on that job, while they're working for that company so that that firm doesn't lose that
00:09:35
person in two years to another firm.
00:09:37
Yeah, I mean, you're inevitably going to learn, right?
00:09:41
I mean, your first job is going to be a tremendous time of learning just because you're doing
00:09:45
new things and we learn when we're doing new things.
00:09:47
And so training's nice.
00:09:49
Training's valuable.
00:09:50
Mentoring is super important.
00:09:51
But just getting the opportunity to try new things, to fail at them a few times and figure
00:09:55
out, OK, how do we do this?
00:09:57
That's the most valuable piece.
00:09:58
And it's certainly the case when you look at why people move.
00:10:01
A huge reason why they move is they hit a point where they feel I'm no longer learning.
00:10:06
And yeah, smart employers kind of look at that and say, how do we make sure people feel
00:10:10
they're continuing to grow in this organization?
00:10:13
So then the early days of a career, somebody coming out of college, those first couple
00:10:17
of years, how important then are they for that potential path that that person wants
00:10:23
to follow over the next 20 or 30 years?
00:10:25
I guess with some people, it's important.
00:10:26
Others, it's probably not as much.
00:10:28
I mean, I tend to say don't stress out about it too much.
00:10:32
Like I think the particularly the early 20s are a period of exploration.
00:10:37
We make a few mistakes.
00:10:39
We try and figure out what's going to work.
00:10:42
We don't want to make too many mistakes.
00:10:44
We don't want to waste time for the sake of it.
00:10:46
But I think a lot of people have a couple of full starts and I don't think it really
00:10:52
sets them back significant.
00:10:55
I mean, there are the people are coming out of our school, all hoping to get into the
00:10:58
best investment banks and consulting firms.
00:11:01
That's a very nice start.
00:11:03
And if you can do that, that's great.
00:11:04
But that's very much not the norm.
00:11:06
What's then your best advice then for somebody that's in this process right now,
00:11:11
that's a junior, senior in college or coming out of high school, looking to get into the
00:11:16
workforce because they're not going to go to college?
00:11:18
What are some of the components that you think are the most important for them to
00:11:21
consider?
00:11:22
I mean, I think like you said, getting internships, those sorts of things is valuable
00:11:27
if you can talk to a lot of people.
00:11:29
Talk to people who have jobs that you might be interested in.
00:11:32
Talk to people just to figure out what's out there.
00:11:36
Go to careers fairs, networks, spend a lot of time online, apply broadly.
00:11:41
It's not going to be easy.
00:11:43
Particularly, it's not going to be easy to get a job you love.
00:11:47
So it's going to be hard.
00:11:49
But, you know, I think young people today, like all of us, are used to doing hard
00:11:54
things. And so, yeah, you've done a lot of hard things before.
00:11:59
This is another one, right?
00:12:01
And so expect to kind of really invest in it.
00:12:04
You've got to persuade an employer why you're good for the job.
00:12:07
And I'm sure everybody listening to this, they have things that make them great for
00:12:10
what they do.
00:12:11
And there is an employer out there for them.
00:12:13
But it's a question of doing the work to find them and help that employer understand why
00:12:17
they're the right person for the role.
00:12:19
And so this is something that you're looking at even more so right now.
00:12:23
In fact, you're putting a book together about this, correct?
00:12:25
Yeah, so I have a book coming out in October called The Insider Advantage.
00:12:30
And part of it, I do discuss this kind of what happens early in the career versus
00:12:33
later. So, you know, we've talked about your first job is not going to be your kind
00:12:37
of long term job for most people.
00:12:40
But eventually you probably do want to find somewhere where you want to stick.
00:12:43
And so part of what I discuss is this balance between explore early and then find
00:12:48
the right place subsequently.
00:12:50
Matthew, always great to talk to you.
00:12:51
Thanks again for your time today.
00:12:52
Good to speak to you.
00:12:53
Matthew Bidwell, professor of management here at the Wharton School.
00:12:57
Thank you for listening to The Ripple Effect.
00:12:59
We hope you found this episode informative and engaging.
00:13:02
Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review so that we can continue to bring you
00:13:06
the best insight from the Wharton School.
