I’m on a panel next week on negotiations for the academic job market. As usual, it’s isn’t terribly clear to me why I was asked but I agreed because I like to be helpful… Here is what I think I will say, comments from others are much appreciated.
- Is the offer fair? Before you think about negotiating, you ought to have sense of what others are getting, what you are worth, and what you need to be successful. Does the offer seem to hit the main points or is it outside the bounds of what seems reasonable? If it feels bare to you, ask yourself whether you really want the job. At offer time, deans and chairs want to hire you and to provide you with the things that you will need to start your career. Yes, they have budget constraints, policies regarding your salary/course releases vis a vis others in the department, etc but they also want to give you something that attracts you. If you get a really crappy offer (e.g., very low salary, no course releases or a very high initial teaching load, no chance at summer support, no moving expenses, no start-up, no computer, no TAs, etc), good negotiation skills may not improve it a lot.
- Always Negotiate. You’re expected to negotiate. When I was doing this, I read an article (from the Chronicle?) that linked mid-career salary differences by gender to first negotiations. I’m not sure if this is myth that has become common knowledge or is backed up by good research, but it appears that women negotiate less often and less well. Your starting salary will become the basis for your salary for years to come — make sure it’s fair.
- Before Negotiating
- Figure out the local context. What are others getting? What’s the standard start-up fund? What about course releases? What options are available for summer salary? How are TAs allocated? How about computing resources and technology? Figure out what your school or system is doing and what is possible. Engage your networks. If possible, delicately find an informant (perhaps not in the department with which you are negotiating but maybe you know someone in the soc department at another school in the same system?). You can’t negotiate much if you don’t know the standard, the ceiling, and how schools handle the allocation of resources.
- Figure out the national context. Ask your friends — what were they offered? What’s your own department offering? Figure in the cost of living — NYC has to pay more and UC schools are also tough in terms of cost of living. Don’t just look at the averages on the ASA website — you need to know what people are getting this year (or last) at the same type of school. Pay attention to the other pieces of the package beyond salary — a higher salary is good but if you want your research career to start off well, you need time too.
- Figure out what helps you most. How do you work best? Maybe you can’t negotiate an extra course release, but perhaps you can negotiate priority in terms of scheduling (to balance or stack your teaching, depending on your work style) or courses that you teach. What’s most important to you? Going in with a laundry list (with no ranking) of requests is probably unhelpful — decide what’s most important and push hard on a few things. Be reasonable and accomodating on things that you don’t care as much about.
- Negotiation with and without multiple offers.
- With Other Offers: Obviously, this makes it easier. Particularly with salary, I had a pretty good sense of what I was worth because the offers differed by only about 1,000 per year. Every school asked for what the others were doing — I moved my initial salary up fairly quickly but I also hit the ceiling fast. It is not unreasonable to factor in cost of living differences — I was offered the same salary in a no-income tax/cheap living state and a big income tax/high cost state. This was a tougher sell in terms of “matching salary” but I took a stab at it. Multiple offers also helped with respect to course releases and summer salary.
- Without Other Offers. I’m not sure how far you can get without competing offers but I would also say that you should negotiate without them. Successful negotiations should be framed in terms of what you need to be successful — this frame is equally applicable whether or not you have competing offers. Also, in my own case, I had competing offers at lesser-ranked schools while I was negotiating with a higher ranked school — it’s not clear to me how much the competing offers mattered in this case.
- Other Assorted Thoughts:
- Don’t enter into lengthy negotiations with schools you are not interested in. It makes a chair work for you, elevates expectations, and burns you in the end. People may disagree with me on this, but I think using a school for an extra course release or small increase in salary at the school you really want to go to is not worth the damage to your reputation.
- Balance salary and time interests. More time spent on your research may pay off much more than a small salary increase in the long run.
- Pay attention to how your salary is structured. If you have competing offers, departments may take money from elsewhere to supplement your base salary. Your base salary is typically the portion used to calculate your raise. Higher base salaries are good.
- Don’t forget about start-up costs. You need a computer, software, and you need to have these things replaced at regular intervals.
- Don’t forget about travel. If conference attendance is part of your evaluation, then schools ought to support it.
- Don’t forget about TAs and RAs. If you can’t get a course release or extra salary, how about a 25% TA or RA. Sometimes money can’t be used or found for certain things but might be appropriated from elsewhere to achieve the same goal. In negotiations, you ought to be clear about your end goals but flexible in how to achieve them.
- End negotiations in a timely manner. Schools want an answer.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten many things — I’ll post again on this after the panel and would love to hear about the things I forgot (or am just flat-out wrong on).
NSP – Thank you, this is really helpful!
I have one suggestion that I received from an advanced student for when I went on the market that I thought seemed really helpful. She found a professor at a university where she did not have an offer and not at her own university (though she also received advice from them) to help her with the negotiations process. It’s kind of like
She suggested finding someone at a university where
One thing that an advanced student told me that she did when she was going through the negotiation process that I thought was really helpful was to ask someone at
Oops! Hit the submit button too soon, so ignore the last two paragraphs in the preceding comment. Sorry about that!
I was saying that it was like your suggestion for figuring out the local context, but she also found that talking through strategy with someone who did not have an interest at all was really helpful.
Alright, I am going to step away from the keyboard now, before I muck something else up.
I recommend the faculty salary survey in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Really helpful to give you an idea of the local context. Not starting salaries, but still very useful for a ballpark idea.
thank you! this is really helpful!
For most public universities salary info is findable online. That was invaluable for me last year.
Also, I negotiated without another offer and was still able to get bumps in my base salary and moving costs.
Great summary, NSP. Two minor points I’d add to things you already mentioned:
- Course release: think about when you want to take it. I didn’t give it much thought and took it in my first semester. Two of our recent hires pushed it into their second year — figuring that the first year would be so crazy anyway, that a one-course release wouldn’t help them that much with writing — while another pushed it back to the second semester.
- “Don’t enter into lengthy negotiations with schools you are not interested in.” When I started getting offers, I knew which job I wanted. Their initial offer was even better than I expected, surprising even my advisors. While others advised me to wait and negotiate, one of my mentors, who was also our dept chair, said that if I was absolutely sure, then there was value in making a chair look good to a dean by accepting quickly. That’s probably low on a candidate’s list of priorities, but it’s worth mentioning.
Great advice. I’ll check this page again when I go on the job market! I also wanted to let you know that I linked to your page on my blog, thedailyasker.blogspot.com, which is about women and negotiation. Cheers!
[...] panel on job market negotiation* last week and happily found that much of what I had written in my previous post was reiterated by others. In addition to me, the panel included another junior faculty member, [...]