
Eric Lin
Associate Professor of Business · Chair of the Business Program
Oberlin College & Conservatory
Eric Lin studies how people build careers and how organizations decide what that work is worth. His research takes apart executive pay, the moves people make between jobs, and the gender gaps that open up along the way - asking, in each case, what is really driving the number. He teaches business and finance to undergraduates at Oberlin, and came to the classroom after nine years at McKinsey and a doctorate at Harvard Business School.
Research areas
How managers and executives move between jobs, and what those moves do to pay and prospects.
- [Paper] How Costly Is a Resume Gap for Executives? 2025
- [Paper] Do the Best and Brightest West Point Officers Stay in or Leave the Army? 2025
- [Paper] Resume Gaps Still Matter 2024
- [Paper] Can a More Detailed LinkedIn Profile Boost Your Salary? 2023
What sets executive pay, and where gender gaps in it come from.
- [Paper] Determinants of Gender Differences in Change in Pay Among Job-Switching Executives 2022
- [Paper] Job-Hopping Toward Equity 2021
- [Paper] Does Corporate Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers? 2020
- [Talk] External Labor Markets and the Importance of Credentials to Executive Pay 2017
Work with West Point on who speaks up, who stays, and who succeeds.
- [Paper] Do the Best and Brightest West Point Officers Stay in or Leave the Army? 2025
- [Paper] The Positive and Negative Effects of Social Status on Ratings of Voice Behavior: A Test of Opposing Structural and Psychological Pathways 2022
- [Talk] New Directions in Voice Research: Exploring the Relational Context of Voice 2021
- [Talk] Fanning the Voice Flame: Unpacking How Leaders and Peers Impact Employee Voice 2020
How experience, credentials, and the stigma of scandal travel with people across a career.
- [Paper] Identify Critical Roles to Improve Performance 2023
- [Paper] Can a More Detailed LinkedIn Profile Boost Your Salary? 2023
- [Paper] Does Corporate Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers? 2020
- [Case] Lojas Americanas: Project DNA and the "People Machine" 2020