As I watched my cousin, decked out in cap and gown, walk across the stage to receive her college diploma last week, I couldn’t help but feel concerned about her future prospects. 

Headwinds are peppered all over the job forecast for her and this next generation of workers. Economic volatility, global tensions, the looming AI “takeover”—these are just a few of the factors that have slowed down the job market to a crawl. And yet, in this low-hire, low-fire environment, Kellogg’s Benjamin Friedrich has uncovered a strategy that can help match the employers who are still hiring with aspiring employees in a way that finds both groups on top. That’s this week.

Plus, we look at one of the defining features of lasting relationships.

Help wanted?

“Nobody wants to work anymore.” Or at least that’s what many employers have been claiming. All the while, millions of people in the U.S. have been on the hunt for a job. 

Economic theory suggests a straightforward solution for this mismatch: an employer simply needs to offer the right—usually higher—wages. But in many cases, companies aren’t biting. 

“There are people looking for work,” says Friedrich, an associate professor of strategy. “If firms say they can’t find workers, there’s a price that should be able to clear this market.” 

Friedrich and his colleagues created a mathematical model to help figure out why many firms aren’t taking this approach. They found that the most likely reason for firms’ hiring difficulties is their own inaccurate understanding of what the open roles are worth. Companies set wages too low to attract workers and then are too slow to correct the error, which ultimately creates hiring gaps. 

The model’s predictions, validated by patterns in real-world survey data, answer the question of why firms often don’t raise wages to prevent or quickly resolve hiring difficulties. When facing uncertainty, firms choose low initial wages to avoid overpaying and then are slow to update these offers. This prolongs hiring gaps, including among attractive companies, and can lead firms to ultimately set wages even higher than they might have if they’d acted sooner. 

“Maybe [as an employer] I don’t know how tough the competition is out there—and because I don’t want to overpay, my strategy is to feel the market’s temperature first by offering a low wage,” Friedrich explains. “If I get turned down, I’ll readjust wages up gradually. But I’m going to struggle [to fill vacancies] in the meantime, and I’m going to end up paying more anyway.” 

Businesses hoping to improve their hiring can start by investing in “wage intelligence” tools and services to get up-to-date information on competitive pay rates. These services can be expensive but are often worth the cost, especially for rapidly expanding companies.

“Getting access to this information is really important when you have a lot of profit opportunity now,” Friedrich says.

Read more in Kellogg Insight.

It’s all about compatibility 

But, as business leaders know all too well, there’s more to the employer–employee story than wages alone. There’s a human component that has much more to do with relationships. 

For prospective employees, that might mean figuring out how well they believe they’ll get along with other people at an organization and fit into its culture. And whether these or any relationships are going to pan out often boils down to compatibility, according to Eli Finkel, a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg and a codirector of the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement.

After decades of studying relationships, Finkel found that what truly matters in cultivating connections—either in your personal or professional life—are the small, positive interactions people have that, over time, enable them to “build something that never existed before.”

“A phrase gets repeated. A joke sticks. A ritual forms. And a private world takes shape,” he says. “That’s compatibility.” 

Finkel believes this approach to relationships often paves the way for lasting connections in large part because it allows people to stay true to themselves throughout the process. 

“Once our relationship becomes part of our identity, being true to it stops feeling like self-denial,” he says. 

Watch Finkel’s TED2026 talk at TEDLive or read more at TEDBlog.