I have an offer from a small LAC, but I also have a job talk scheduled at a more preferred R1 in the following weeks. Suppose the small LAC wants to hear back from me before I hear back from the R1. What should I do in such situations?
How soon do you have to respond to an offer if you have a job talk elsewhere?
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OP, I faced a similar situation a few years ago. I told the search committee chair that I had another job talk scheduled and that I would like to delay any decision about their offer, if possible, until I had completed the other talk. The chair said no problem and graciously allowed me to postpone the decision by two weeks.
I'm not sure whether honesty in such cases can blow up in your face. I was in admittedly in a privileged position. I had a TT track position already and was simply seeking to move up, so I could afford to let opportunities slip.
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I have an offer from a small LAC, but I also have a job talk scheduled at a more preferred R1 in the following weeks. Suppose the small LAC wants to hear back from me before I hear back from the R1. What should I do in such situations?
Ask them for the extension and tell them the reason. The worst that can happen is they give you a firm deadline before the talk, which is pretty much the status quo ex ante. So the outcome win, or lose nothing
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You might also talk to the search committee chair at the R1 to let them know you've got an offer and potentially to get some realistic assessment of their timeline. If the talk isn't even for a few weeks plus a week or two minimum for faculty to vote and to deal with whatever bureaucratic nonsense that might have to be done before the offer can actually be extended, it's possible that there's just no way they could get you a decision in time.
Congrats on getting an offer, and consider yourself lucky! Many people have multiple interviews and walk away with nothing.
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Take the offer. You can always back out later if something better comes along.
Don't do this. You're giving away negotiating power. In fact, another strategy is to leverage the R1 job talk to potentially improve your LAC offer (especially on the research budget, summer 9ths and teaching load/leave during the first year). If you get the R1 offer, you already have something that the R1 chair can use to get more resources from the Dean; if not, you just improved your offer. As a general advice, negotiate hard --be honest, but negotiate hard. Congrats and good luck!
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Take the offer. You can always back out later if something better comes along.
I know this is not good etiquette, and ordinarily I wouldn't give this kind of advice, but this might honestly be the way to go.
You will greatly annoy the people at the LAC and likely forever burn bridges with them if you accept the offer and then end up taking the other job. They'll feel like you strung them along and wasted their time. However, we're talking about a little hiccup to them relative to where you are going to potentially spend the rest of your life. If the LAC is full of a bunch of nobodies who can't hurt you later, I wouldn't worry about what they can do to you.
Some are going to say this is immoral, but the simple fact is it's probably going to be much harder to publish out of that LAC than you think. Where you start has a big impact on your career trajectory. Just make sure they don't find out you interviewed somewhere after you accepted the offer if you don't end up getting that R1 job. Honestly, there should be a similar system to what we do for grad students where everyone has until some specified date, after fielding the totality of their options, to decide where they want to start their first job.
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Take the offer. You can always back out later if something better comes along.
I know this is not good etiquette, and ordinarily I wouldn't give this kind of advice, but this might honestly be the way to go.
You will greatly annoy the people at the LAC and likely forever burn bridges with them if you accept the offer and then end up taking the other job. They'll feel like you strung them along and wasted their time. However, we're talking about a little hiccup to them relative to where you are going to potentially spend the rest of your life. If the LAC is full of a bunch of nobodies who can't hurt you later, I wouldn't worry about what they can do to you.
Some are going to say this is immoral, but the simple fact is it's probably going to be much harder to publish out of that LAC than you think. Where you start has a big impact on your career trajectory. Just make sure they don't find out you interviewed somewhere after you accepted the offer if you don't end up getting that R1 job. Honestly, there should be a similar system to what we do for grad students where everyone has until some specified date, after fielding the totality of their options, to decide where they want to start their first job.And your research is equivalent to finding a cure for cancer so you owe it to society to break your word to the LAC.
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How is a powerless early-career person reneging on an offer so much worse than a department strong arming someone into taking their job when that person potentially has better options?
This isn’t about the importance oh his work. It’s about the quality of the rest of his life.
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Just tell them. They'll appreciate the transparency. I got a TT offer two years ago and was waiting to hear from 2 other schools I had campus visits with. Told them. One was like hang on, one was like you should probably take it, we probably don't have anything for you here. So yeah.
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I know who you are OP and we are not a small LAC. You just said that to get advice about our offer in an attempt o mask your identity. You better accept our offer or you'll find yourself desperately searching for a VAP late in the game. Your record is good, but not great. The R1 offer is not happening