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