Yes, I’m a filthy liar. Don’t act so surprised. Since the topics have occurred three times in various venues, however, I decided I’d continue my series on the joys of the job market jaunt with two more posts–one on the negotiation process and one on the aftermath. So here we go.
Let me begin by noting that I am the worst negotiator in North America. On most issues I am a marshmallow, yet on a few matters of principle I get all Andre Linoge. Because I am happy to be employed and happier still to be at CMU, my faculty contract negotiation here fell pretty cleanly in the former category. Nevertheless, I’ll try to offer a little perspective on the process.
1. Sensibly set the bar. You probably already know about The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s online digest of the AAUP faculty salary survey. It’s a dandy place to get a ballpark sense of your earning potential, but academics (particularly those in the Humanities), be forewarned: the numbers you see are culled from all full-time members of the faculty in question. Were I to assume that I would start at Abilene Christian University (which I’ll single out because it’s the first on the list) at a salary of around $56,300, I would be sorely disappointed–the Humanities are a buyer’s market, and it’s typical for the scale for a new assistant professor in English to start at 15%-20% less than the listed figure. You may feel I’m just belaboring the obvious, but I’m aware of at least a couple of folks who went in to their contract talks with the AAUP average in hand. Because universities have to lay out more money to land folks in disciplines where the candidates could reasonably expect to make gobs of cash in the private sector (business, the sciences, etc.), those survey figures trend upward. I think it’s generally wiser to focus on your own financial situation than to fiddle with imaginary numbers, but a little active searching will almost always turn up more indicative figures for your prospective destinations.
2. Set the scales. One of the reasons I’m such a poor negotiator is that my needs are exceedingly modest; I was raised in a home by a single mother who never crested $20,000 but still managed to support two beamish boys, and my idea of what a dollar can do was formed accordingly. You will come to the bargaining table with all sorts of variables specific to you (upbringing, hubbies, wives, dependents, student loans), but the generic stuff tends to be fairly static: schools in urban areas have to pay more to attract faculty than schools in college towns; schools in the Northeast tend to pay more than schools in the South. It’s often helpful to weigh your variables (will my spouse be able to find work? will I be able to afford a home? will I be able to eat sushi three times a week?) against such constants. Prioritize and itemize what’s material to you, as practical leverage tends to be much more effective than the abstract varieties. When administrators set your initial salary, they have higher-order calculations in mind–future percentile raises will be based on that sum, and a shift of $500 can save the university thousands over the course of your career. Some kind of tangible, realistic motive might prompt them to float you a higher initial figure, and if you’ve done your homework, you can tell them why that cash is needed to secure your services.
3. Consider the whole package. Salary is paramount for most folks during negotiations, but I’d encourage you to take a look at the whole package of perquisites that come with a given gig. Some schools will offer scalable insurance plans, some will offer easy-to-achieve merit raises, some will periodically tweak numbers to correct for salary compression, and some will mix in benefits that a parent, frequent traveler, or archival researcher might find hard to resist. By the same token, some schools engage in squirrelly accounting, hold merit benefits just out of reach, or have their fates hinge annually on the state budget. (Check the Chronicle now and again; horror stories abound.) All those matters might weigh on your decision to head to the U in the first place, much less set the bar for your initial expectations. Given the state of the economy right now, it would be tough for most academics to turn down any job; if you’re fortunate enough to have multiple options on the table, however, try to take into account the big picture–one that will evolve over 30 years–not just the placement of the dollar sign, comma, and decimal point.
4. Bide your time. While I think it’s perfectly fair game for a school to make candidates an offer before they’ve had the chance to interview with other colleges, the question of timing becomes a bit more chippy in the thick of the hiring season. Do not be surprised if administrators try to rush you into making an early commitment; that’s their job, after all. When pressed, however, most will cop to guidelines already in place that dictate how much time a candidate has to decide, one or two weeks in most cases. Use that time–not to make the university sweat it out in the hopes that they’ll beef up their offer as the clock winds down, but to flesh out your sense of the pros and cons of making the commitment and the nature of your bargaining position. I’m hoping other readers will weigh in with their sense of how the process plays out, but my none-too-surprising advice is to think the whole thing through, to envision a full-length career at the institution in question, and to use every second on the clock before you take your shot.
5. Sift your chips. Perhaps the only really practical bargaining advice I can offer pertains to the variety of items you can fiddle with. Some schools will set hard limits from the get-go, and more than a few (for reasons of policy or practice) will make you a one-time, take-it-or-leave-it offer. The rest, however, are willing to get creative if it will help them land the candidates they want. The same dean that fights you tooth and nail over your initial salary might be more accommodating with one-time expenditures for concrete hiring incentives: she might have discretionary funds at hand for moving or for travel, she might be able to open professional development coffers for library acquisitions or a new computer, or she might be able to slide you a graduate assistant or reassigned time to help you get a running start on earning tenure and promotion. As I suggest above, the strongest cases proceed from concrete need, so if you can convince the dean that a course reduction will help you get that book finished, you have a decent chance of finding a little fiscal wiggle room.
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Though I know full well that there are dozens of tricksier pickles–having the leverage of two job offers, for example, or having one so-so job offer on the table while wishing and waiting on news from a top choice–those scenarios would draw me well beyond the limits of my experience. I’m happy to field questions if I can, however, and hopefully there are readers out there who can fill in the blanks or otherwise increase the supply of brass tacks.
This post shall come to pass. So said the prophet, lo, these many days ago.
Yea and verily, sooth was spoken.
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