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