Seminar – The Effect of Founder Experience on Labour Market Outcomes: A Field Experiment

Dr Tristan Botelho, Yale School of Management

Founding one’s own venture is often seen as desirable; however, most entrepreneurs must subsequently enter wage employment. Although a transition to wage employment is common, it remains unclear how founder experience is perceived and evaluated by recruiters at hiring firms. The study argues that current theory can be used to make a strong case for founder experience as an asset as well as a liability to hiring firms. The research first discusses the advantages and disadvantages of founder experience for wage employment and then tests these theories through a field experiment, namely a resume audit study. Specifically, it tests how those who started their career as founders fare relative to those who started their career as wage employees at the initial evaluation stage of the hiring process: receiving a callback for an interview. Findings show that former founders receive fewer callbacks than non-founders; however, all founders are not disadvantaged similarly. Former founders of successful ventures receive even fewer callbacks than former founders of failed ventures. Through 20 interviews with technical recruiters, the study highlights the mechanisms driving this founder experience discount: concerns related to the applicant’s capability and ability to fit into and remain committed to the wage employment and the hiring firm. It also investigate three sources of heterogeneity: applicant gender, hiring firm age, and job location.

Speaker bio

Dr Tristan Botelho is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour and a Faculty Affiliate of the Programme on Entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management. Broadly his research is on evaluation processes, often in the context of digital platforms, entrepreneurship and labour markets. This research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science, and he has been recognised with several research awards. His research has also been covered by various media outlets and he has written pieces for the Harvard Business Review and the London School of Economics Business Review. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in 2017.