How say is it to return after taking a job outside the US?
Taking a job outside the US and coming back
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unlikely...because people who take jobs outside the US -with the intention of returning to the US- already failed the US job market. It is not the going abroad but the type who goes abroad with the intention of returning to the US that makes it unlikely.
Other people who go abroad do so for *reasons (family, lifestyle, tastes) and have no intention of returning to the US.
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Unlikely but only partly a selection effect that Silas is talking about. It is also just a significant bias of us hiring committees. Postdoc outside US, especially Europe, get a good look. TT faculty not so much. The assumption tends to be that if you went overseas to begin with, you prefer to be there and are unlikely to return. Committees also simply do not know the foreign landscape well. Nor do administrators who are more familiar with peer institutions in the US. Fair or not, if you take a tt job outside the US (other than a few places in Canada) you probably aren't coming back unless you are a superstar.
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People are increasingly aware that job market is tough and for many people the options are global. There are plenty of jobs in Europe (and some in Asia) that would be considered preferable to most jobs in the US (on a professional level), so they would not be viewed as having ‘struck out’ on the US market.
If your CV remains strong/improves you could still be competitive to return.
But it is rare and I would not expect it to work out.
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it really depends on where. if you're going to lse or uppsala or some similar high profile (in us poli sci) department, then its as straightforward as moving from anywhere (which is always hard to begin with). but if you're going to some random german or spanish school nobody in the us has ever heard of, than no you're probably not coming back.