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It occurred to me this morning, as I was pondering our forthcoming ads for two political science positions and a conversation I had yesterday with some other social scientists, that had I accepted either of the tenure-track jobs I was offered before coming to TAMIU, I’d never have even applied for this job even though on most dimensions, at least in my personal judgment, it’s a better position than either of those were/are.
I’m not really sure what this all means, but I figured letting my readers engage in something a step above dream analysis might be more interesting than not posting anything today.
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2 comments:
I’d say there’s probably some incomplete info and some satisficing. As your info becomes more complete about your job, perhaps the need to satisfice (here I’m thinking also in terms of “rationalizing a decision already made) becomes less (assuming the new info makes your job more desireable, which it sounds like it does). The challenge, then, in writing the new ads is to include enough information that folks will be more enticed to apply for what is a better job than they might otherwise assume.
An alternative problem, on the flip side, is how do you convince folks that the job you have isn’t as good as they think it probably is and that you are indeed movable. I haven’t figured this one out.
Part of the explanation here is that the other two positions are comparable with this one on most dimensions (similar prestige levels, similar institutional missions) at least when it comes to the academic side.
To be honest, if I hadn’t critically needed a job (i.e. I had a TT or even had told Tulane to take a hike when I got an offer for a 2-year contract elsewhere just after I verbally accepted the Tulane job), there wasn’t much about the TAMIU ad that would have appealed to me and my experiences with other institutions in the state would have led me to think that the salary and living conditions would not be an improvement over the middle of nowhere or what we euphemistically called “Metro East” in the St. Louis area. And I’m not sure how I’d have fixed it to appeal more to me. Maybe I’m just hard to satisfy though.
Of course I really don’t expect to encounter the “flip side” problem you mention, precisely for the reasons above. I do get the “why did you take job X when you really want job X-prime” or “why are you interested in job X-prime when you recently took job X” question though, which is hard to answer very diplomatically (“well, if someone had offered me job X-prime before I had to accept job X I would have”) sometimes. Irony of ironies, of course, is that “2-year contract job” is much closer to X-prime than X so I wouldn’t have to answer these questions in the first place.
I’m going to just stop now before I start depressing myself.