Why Candidates Should Negotiate

As I mentioned in the previous post, there's some flap here about candidates negotiating. While I won't go into the gruesome details of it all, I did think, as I was responding to my colleague, that there are some pretty important reasons (from both sides of the table) why candidates should negotiate.

Reason 1: Sometimes Opportunity Only Knocks Once
Not so far back, just after this blog started, I mentioned negotiations for the faculty contract here. One of the things that I uniformly heard from older faculty when they talked about their distresses with pay scale was that they only had one real moment to influence their salaries: the moment of negotiation. After that, raises came and went, but there wasn't the ability to push for more beyond whatever system the university had in place without getting an outside offer.

Reason 2: Give a Little, Get a Little
This is going to sound needlessly Machiavellian, but it's true. When I did hiring in the corporate world, one of the things my mentor told me was to always be prepared to let someone we were recruiting win a bit. His reasoning was that someone who came in and who saw that the place they were being employed could be reasonable and that wanted them badly enough to give in a little, would be a happier employee in the long run. If the interview is the first chance for someone to meet faculty, negotiation is their first chance to meet the University. That's an impression that will last.

Academic searches are often reluctant to try this logic out, but I bet if you surveyed faculty who didn't get to negotiate - or who got nothing from them - you'd find a pretty high occurrence of faculty who were prepared to leave their jobs. If keeping faculty is really the priority of your university, be prepared to not just negotiate, but to "lose" a bit.

Reason 3: Where the School Negotiates Says a Lot About Its Priorities
One of the things I've learned in my academic interviewing time is that a school that truly sticks to its priorities will be prepared to back up those commitments if a candidate can offer a connection to them. If a school claims it wants research but can't spring for a little extra research money, be wary. If they value teaching but won't find some ways to help you integrate better, then you know they're blowing smoke.

Reason 4: There Are Two Kinds of Attention - Negotiations Are the Right Kind
Here's the thing: if a candidate is trying to negotiate with you, it means they're interested in you. If they just take your first offer, it likely means they're desperate. Which one they are will tell you a lot about where you might be headed. Academic hiring is, as noted here, there, and everywhere, ridiculously problematic. A person who negotiates, though, has to be taking some level of interest in you, and that means if you get them, they're likely coming in with a different energy and commitment to what you want.

Certainly, it's not always the case that the candidate is interested in you, but if the Prisoner's Dilemma taught us anything, it's that we're better off entering a negotiation with some sense of faith in the person and their motives than we are if we start by doubting them.

On some level, the negotiation process has to be seen as a testing of university resources and commitment. Done correctly, it's a chance for both sides of the table to emerge happier and stronger from the process.

More Views From This Side of the Table

So one of the secret joys of job searches is that you get to eat out lots, often at places you like. I expect, out of this influx of candidates, to get at least one good steak dinner on the University's dime. That probably means if you're hungry, reading this post isn't going to help. But really, it isn't intended just to be about food.

Beyond my own selfish (and gluttonous) motives, one of the things I'm liking in our candidates is that they're staking a claim on some things and making me do it, too. I'm in a program that's got a firmly stated mission - it's one of the attractive things that I think it well and truly attractive about our program - so sooner or later, anyone who wants to work here has to address it. Some candidates tiptoe around it, some try to ignore it , some pay lip service to it.

As a bit of clarification, I don't mean a mission statement in that resume/business school/corporate manner. Ours has a pretty direct view of what our program and field of endeavor is lacking and asks that we - and our students - bring their A games to change it. But for me, what I'm seeing this go-round is truly impressive.

As you may have guessed, yours truly likes a debate. Too much probably. So when a candidate sets down their fork, ignores their Pad Thai, looks me in the eye and says, "Now you know what I think. What do you think your mission means?", things are off to a good start. I look for that ability to engage - and to question - from a colleague. I didn't come from one of those particularly combative graduate programs, but we did have great discussions on things, and more than a few people there changed how I think about things. So maybe that's part of why I think it's important that I get a sense from candidates about how they'd read the mission of our department and where they'd take it.

And if their argument is good enough to make me ignore my Spring roll and Masuman curry, well, then we've got a winner, don't we?