#88 Professor Matthew Bidwell: Examining Patterns in Employment to Better Understand Career Mobility
Recently, Rahul and Sourish interviewed Professor Matthew Bidwell, an Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School. Professor Bidwell’s research examines new patterns in work and employment, and he looks specifically into the causes and effects of employment relationships using people analytics, with work on industry contractors and career mobility. Professor Bidwell’s work has been featured in both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and he is also a recipient of Wharton’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2020.
Professor Bidwell came from the UK and majored in Chemistry. While in the US, he got a master’s degree in political science followed by working as a consultant at McKinsey. Realizing that “working is hard, and maybe studying other people working is easier,” Professor Bidwell pursued a Ph.D. in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at MIT. People who had expertise in e-commerce were in demand in the 1990s and that’s why Professor Bidwell sought a Ph.D.
Sourish followed his description by referencing one of Professor Bidwell’s studies: “After the end: Entrepreneurship in your career path.” Bidwell’s conclusion, after surveying Penn alumni, was that entrepreneurs generally have a more managerial role and upward mobility. He claims that while most entrepreneurs generally move back towards employment within ten years. Contrary to our intuition, entrepreneurs actually land better jobs after spending time on their individual pursuits. While this study was based on correlation, it could be implied that entrepreneurs develop many skills while they are in the process of founding a company which makes them more appealing to employers. However, the variables could be confounding in that most people who pursue entrepreneurship are more ambitious and driven, making them stronger employees.
Professor Bidwell added that most business schools offer a high level of flexibility in the classes that they offer. People who went on to pursue entrepreneurship pursued a much wider range of courses and took full advantage of the university’s offerings than those who became employees.
To address Rahul’s question regarding hiring outsiders versus insiders, Professor Bidwell asserts that those who move upwards within a company tend to have higher salaries and more benefits. The cause of this phenomenon, he claims, is that employers tend to hire people they know can do a job in order to avoid wasting time and money on training. Once again, track record is the primary determiner for future success in the job setting as well. It’s a big risk to take someone you don’t know, especially when you don’t know them well enough to judge their work ethic.
Apart from track record, Professor Bidwell recommends looking at intelligence and personality. With the data he uncovered, he states that Conscientiousness is the most important trait out of the Big 5 (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism). Being efficient and organized is of critical importance to any organization. For consulting services and employers, he recommends analyzing data above all else. Perceptions and testimonies can deceive but hard facts are generally closer to the true performance of an individual or a service.
While Professor Bidwell recommends that having physical energy, like Jack Ma, would be beneficial to leading a company, it is not essential. Just knowing your strengths and weaknesses and having people join your venture who are vastly different from you and complement you is enough to be in contention for success.
In regards to advice Professor Bidwell would give to the current generation of students that would like to start the process of making an impact on society, he recommends being open-minded to new possibilities. While people generally tend to become less idealistic as time progresses and conflicts arise, he urges students to keep their goals in mind. He wishes we could downplay our materialistic desires and status. Instead, we should focus on achieving societal impact. While this tends to be an idealistic view of “changing the world,” it should be balanced with pragmatism for sustained impact.
You can watch the full interview here.
Author: Srikar Parsi
Editor: Ayan Lateef
Interviewers: Rahul Kavuru and Sourish Jasti
Graphic: Sraavya Penumudi
Video Editing: Chinmay Korapati