Update in 2022: Since posting this document online, I got quite a few requests for material and more questions about the moving process. I have updated these extra parts at the end of the documents in the new section called “More tips”.
Context: I spent 5 years (Aug. 2014–July 2019) as a tenure track assistant professor in a Tier-2 research university before moving to a Tier-1 research university. In the new University, I restarted my tenure-track clock. This document pertains to my experience and perspective on the move. I moved as a tenure track Mechanical Engineering faculty to a higher-ranked university, so these notes may not be applicable as-is for other scenarios (e.g., faculty in other fields especially those which do not require fundraising, moving to schools with same/similar ranking, moving as an associate professor). If you need my application material that includes cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, diversity statement, and curriculum vitae, please email me.
Difference between pre-tenure position change and first time tenure track position: The pre-tenure move is different from moving to your first tenure track position in some not-so-obvious ways. Here are some pointers on what the search committee is most interested in pre-tenure applicants.
Deciding to move: I had many reasons to move. The equipment startup was simply not sufficient for my growing ambitions to get into experimental research, difficulty in hiring good international students given the lower ranking, and difficulty in finding collaborators. Lastly, it did not help that my research did not align with the strategic research areas of the school; people working in the strategic research areas saw better collaboration opportunities, greater opportunities for fundraising, and better overall support.
Some other reasons people move is because they want an increase in salary, unfavorable working conditions, difficult administrators, chair, or colleagues, dual-career issues. Occasionally faculty will get an offer from another school so that they can get a counteroffer (more toward the end on this topic) in the current school. Even if you don’t have any reason to move or to receive the counter-offer, going on the job market is a great way to calibrate yourself – if you get interviews that means you are competitive and if not, then you can change your research portfolio accordingly.
If you feel that you are not being loyal in moving from one tenure track position to another, you do not need to feel so. First, you owe the university/college/department/faculty/students around you nothing and there is no obligation to stay if you don’t want to. Second, the colleagues/administrators around you have moved (some multiple times), so can you and people around you will not mind it eventually. Third, no matter what you told in the job interview about staying/working in the school, circumstances can change and you are not liable to what you said in good faith when you were interviewing. In summary, if you think this is a good move for you professionally (and personally), you should go on the job market.
Timing of the move: When I started looking to move at the end of the 4th year, I was not worried about not getting tenure in my old university. That was because I had a favorable mid-tenure review and I had met the tenure norms that were informally communicated within the assistant professor inner circles. I had to my credit 22 journals/conference papers, 7 MS students graduated, 3 PhD students in my advisements, and $720,000 in total funding that included $650,000 credited to me; fairly good teaching evaluations and reasonably good service inside and outside the University. The fact that I got a sole investigator NSF award (my second sole investigator award) towards the end of my 4th year made my application particularly strong and it was perhaps the best time to go on the job market.
It is best to move when you can convince the search committee that you are on the path of research independence in multiple ways; you have funded grants, you have graduate students, you have published few papers without your PhD/postdoc advisor but with your students. Although other things such as teaching and service are important they are usually never the deciding factor unless there are serious issues. Assuming you have publications with your graduate students, it is still best to go on the job market when you win a major research grant that is easy to transfer to the new university. It helps if this is a federal sole investigator grant and the federal agency has an established protocol on transferring grants. The best grant you can have when you want to transfer is probably the NSF CAREER because it is tied to the investigator and not the institution but other sole investigator NSF grants would also be great. If you don’t have sole PI NSF grants you should still figure out (discretely) if it is possible to transfer the grant. The reason I want to stress transferable grants is that having $ that can move increases your chances of being viewed favorably by the search committee.
Thing to be aware of before you start on application materials: First, preparing the application material, applying for jobs, interviewing, etc. will take time and energy and the last thing you want is a failed job search and an unproductive tenure track year. Second, even if you nailed the perfect job, moving pre-tenure will probably lead to loss of years towards tenure. That said, there was one institute where I was told that they would count all my years in the old university towards tenure in the new university. Sweet deal but I never got an offer from that school. Third, it goes without saying, do not tell your colleagues (unless this is a much-trusted friend) or chair or dean that you are on the job market; it is not going to help you especially if it so happens that you did not get any job offer. Fourth, when you go for the interviews, you will have to find people who will teach for you unless you cleverly schedule your interviews or classes (a much difficult task). Finally, be aware that because you thought you would be the best candidate for the position in the University, the search committee may not think so. Thus, your best bet is to apply wide and to as many positions as you can.
Planning your research/grants the year you are on the job market: You should strategize your research/grants preparation/submision the year you are on the job market to give you maximum leverage if you are successful in your job switch. For example, you might want to write papers and grants but not submit till you change your affiliation or use the time to explore a new research idea, etc.
In the year I was on the job market, I did not submit any new research grants. I used all my time to do research and write papers which I refrained from publishing. Once I moved to the new school, I quickly sent out the papers in quick succession.
Preparing the application material: The application material is pretty standard. It includes a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a teaching philosophy statement, a research statement, a list of 3 to 5 referees, and for some schools (almost all California state schools) a diversity statement. Since there are many resources on creating the application material, I will skip talking about this aspect. However, I would like to mention a few points: (1) the cover letter is very important and it will be read by the search committee so try to bring out the best in you in the cover letter (e.g., funding in bold); (2) include pictures/photos in your statements because that eases reading and to some extent helps your application to stand out; I had pictures/photos in my research and teaching statements and my curriculum vitae; (3) in your curriculum vitae include funding on the very first page (usually after your education or professional experience), the reason being that deans/chair who are extremely busy are most interested in your funding profile than other things; (4) have a good research website and indicate it in your application as some search committees will simply look at your website to help them assess your application. You could put a tracker on your website so you can see if there were hits on your website from the Universities you applied to. I have been using https://statcounter.com and it has helped me to some extent in knowing the site traffic and correlating with the interviews/offers that I got. (5) You can submit the same cover letter (this is what I did) or write a customized letter (usually one custom paragraph) for each school, but remember it will take more time to write a customized letter. Finally, you could use your official school email for all communications or a personal email but do use your mobile number in your application (instead of office number) because there are chances that the search committee will decide to call rather than email and you do not want to be out of your office when the call is made.
Applying to schools: I used only 2 websites to find faculty positions, https://higheredjobs.com and https://academickeys.com. The advert will indicate the open positions, the level (e.g., Assistant/Associate), the application materials required, how to apply (email/job portal) and the deadline. The application is mostly submitted through a weblink or in rare cases via email. I emailed two professors who I knew in two different schools that I was applying to and got phone interviews in both these schools. It most certainly helps if you know people in the schools you are applying to and make an effort to reach out to them after you apply.
Although I could have applied to Mechanical Engineering Departments and Electrical & Computer Engineering Departments, I consciously decided that I would only apply to Mechanical Engineering Departments. I applied to all Tier-1 schools irrespective of whether I would go/not go if I did get an offer. The rationale is that interviews with schools that you will not go even if you had an offer will provide you with some practice (phone as well as campus interview) so that you are much better prepared for the schools that you are most interested in. No, it is not unethical to do so. Also, getting an offer from a school could potentially be leveraged to solicit offers from other schools (more one this later).
It is always advisable to apply to the position as early as possible. That is, no need to wait for the deadline. This is because there is a high chance that the search committee chair is looking at applications more closely in the beginning because there are fewer applications. Also, sometimes the positions are filled on a rolling basis. This means that review/interview starts as the applications are received. That is, there is no specific deadline for the review to start.
Diversity and inclusion are very important topics in academic environments. Diversity refers to the range of people of different race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, etc. that constitute the environment. Inclusion is providing a supportive and encouraging environment to everybody. It is best to have one paragraph in your teaching statement that addresses diversity and inclusion. It is very likely that the search committee has at least one member, usually a minority person, who is tasked to ensuring that the candidate are aware of diversity and inclusion in the academic environments.
Phone interview: If the search committee likes your application be prepared to get an email to set up a phone interview date. The search committee will consist of 3 to 5 faculty members out of which one of them will be the chair of the search committee (not the chair of the Department) and occasionally one person outside the Department. Some of these people will be in your broad area (e.g., thermal, design, manufacturing) but not exactly expert in your research area(s). Feel free to ask the contact person (can be the chair of the search committee or the staff member who helps scheduling your interview) about the composition of the search committee if they have not already done so. This will help you to better prepare for the phone interview.
You can expect the phone interview to be either a regular phone chat (no video) or a skype / gotomeeting chat (with video). Most interviews are about 20 or 30 minutes but they can also be 45 min or 1 hour long. Be mindful about the time and stick to the allotted time else you will run out of time to answer the questions which might work to your disadvantage. Usually, phone interviews are scheduled back-to-back and the committee might have to cut you out before you can finish answering all questions. Ideally, you want to end a few minutes early to be able to ask questions that you might have about the position. Sometimes you will be told about the interview questions beforehand but most times not. I have found that there are normally 4 - 5 questions (at least for the 20 to 30 min interviews) and are pretty standard. The most common ones are variants of these questions.
As a pre-tenure faculty, who has put some years in a faculty job, you are going to be asked why you are planning to move to another school and if you can transfer your grants. There is also a likelihood that you will be asked about how you ensure diversity and inclusion in the classroom and/or research, which is an important issue in academia. Occasionally, you might be asked how much startup and lab space you would need, a tricky question. You should avoid putting absolute $ figure for the startup. It’s best to be vague; tell them what you would need but don’t put a $ figure. Give a conservative number for the lab space (e.g., 700 to 1000 square foot for a decent experimental program). You only give the $ figure once you get the verbal offer from the chair (more on this later).
My preparation for the phone interview was very algorithmic based on the list of questions mentioned earlier. I would first go to the Department website (and also to other related Departments websites) and find out whose research overlaps my research so that I may be able to collaborate. I would also research on each of the search committee members including their research areas, education, etc. I would also look into courses that I would be interested in teaching and also new courses that I might be able to develop. I would take a note of the course number; you will be amazed that faculty talk about courses by number, not so much by name. There is usually a definite purpose for the advertised position. Some common reasons are the Department wants to grow in the particular research area or hiring as part of a newly developing research group, replace a faculty member who left, etc. If you can find the reason in advance, you can emphasize how you fit the particular requirement during the interview, giving you an edge.
Campus interview: If the search committee liked you, you should hear back either from the search committee chair or the department chair or a staff member about scheduling a time to get you on the campus for the in-person interview. The time between the phone interview and invitation for campus interview is usually less than a month. So if you don’t hear back within a month, you can assume (with high probability) that you were not selected for the campus interview.
The first thing is to decide a date for you to fly in (driving is viable if you are close proximity) for the campus interview. The main issue you will deal with (other than leaving your family for a few days) is that you might have to arrange someone else to teach your classes. Of course, you can schedule your interview so that you do not miss a class by having an exam on the day you are out of town (to be proctored by a teaching assistant). But this is often not the case. Here you might want to have a faculty friend to substitute for you but you should take him/her in confidence (it would not be correct to lie to somebody who is helping you). In my case, I told a graduate student to teach my class in my absence.
The campus interview is usually 1 day long but sometimes 1.5 to 2 days. Depending on the availability of flights and timing of the interviews, be prepared to be out of town for 2 or 3 days. Before you leave, be sure to have the itinerary of your trip that includes all the faculty members, administrators, and laboratories that you are going to visit. Sometimes it is possible to request a meeting with a specific faculty member not in the itinerary (e.g., outside the Department). Do your prior research on all the people you are going to meet and be ready with at least 1 (ideally more) questions for them. It is fine to repeat the same (important) question to multiple people because you will get a perspective on how people think (e.g., questions on tenure requirements or politics in the Department can be asked to multiple people). At any cost, do not ask about spousal hire or other non-standard things during the campus interview as those issues are best discussed after you have the coveted offer.
Some other logistic issues that are often overlooked. You will invariably take a personal item and a carry on baggage on the plane. Ensure that your flight allows you to carry 2 pieces on-board. There are certain flights or certain fare categories (e.g., United basic fare) where the flight will charge you to take the carry-on bag and a personal (laptop) bag onboard. If you are going to check-in your baggage, ensure that you have another set of formal dress and shoes in your carry-on just in case the checked-in bag does not arrive on time. You need to dress formally. At the minimum wear a formal shirt, pant, shoes, and a coat (tie is optional). Keep all your receipts so that you can then scan and send them to the Department to get reimbursed. A better option is to use a smartphone app (I recommend https://www.camscanner.com/; no need to take the paid version) to save scanned copies of the receipts on your phone or email them to yourself. Have your presentation on a thumb drive and on the cloud (e.g., Dropbox) beside your computer just in case. Finally, it is a great idea to sign up for frequent flyer programs with the airlines as you will not only accumulate points for all your faculty job trips (free points) but also subsequently as a Professor.
The campus interview is very standard. It involves a face-to-face meeting with at least one administrator at the College level (usually the dean or associate dean of research), the chair of the department, the faculty members, and sometimes graduate students and other personnel (e.g., laboratory instructors/managers/realtor). There is at least one lunch/dinner/breakfast with one or more faculty members and/or department chair. At the least, you will be asked to give a research talk for about 50 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. Occasionally, you might be asked to give a teaching talk (10 - 15 minutes) or a future research/funding talk (10 - 15 minutes) in addition to the research talk but is not common.
The research talk is the most important part of the interview and you can expect quite a few people showing up for the talk including graduate students. As a pre-tenure faculty with prior faculty experience, you are expected to not only present past research (as a PhD or postdoc) but also your current research that establishes you as an independent researcher. There is no hard and fast rule but you should be able to connect the things you have done in the past, to your current work, and how that leads to future work and funding. You should talk a little bit ( 5 min) on seeking extramural funding and 1-2 slides on teaching at the least. Remember that as someone already on the tenure-track, the expectation is that you are not only an independent researcher but know how to navigate through funding, and this has to show up when you interview.
As you progress in the interview, try to make friends with at least one person (e.g., get to know her/him well). This person is going to be very helpful (perhaps giving you some insider information) but only once you have an informal offer from the department chair. This person might help you with negotiations, telling you what the department chair is thinking, etc. In my case, I was fortunate that in both my offers, the search committee chairs were particularly helpful (but only after I got the informal offer). Also, when you meet new assistant professors be sure to ask them about the startup packages and salaries (if this information is not publicly available). This will immensely help you during your offer negotiations.
Before you depart you might have an exit interview either with the chair of the department or with the search committee. This is your chance to provide them with the last moment clarification about your job interview (if you missed something), re-express your interest in the job, indicate if you have any other job offers and/or interviews coming up (but do not give specific details about the other job offers because it could work against you). Try to figure out when the last person will interview because that will give you a good sense of when the potential offer will be made. Also, after your research talk is over, feel free to ask the faculty members for feedback—it might help you in you in your next job interview (and faculty members always like to give feedback).
Finally, after returning back home, it is a good idea to send short thank you email to some of the people you met. I sent thank-you notes to chairs, search committee members, and occasionally to some faculty members that I met.
Job offer: Hopefully, you have a fair idea about when the last faculty candidate will interview (a question you could ask towards the end of your interview). Because this information can help you gauge when the offer will be made. It typically takes one week to one month for the top candidate to get the job offer. The negotiations typically last for one to two weeks per candidate. Thus, the second person on the list (assuming the first one did not take the job offer) can expect to get the offer in three weeks to 1.5 months. Of course, there are instances when the search committee may decide it did not like any candidate or liked only one candidate or other exceptions may apply. If you have offers from other schools then you should let your first-choice school know immediately. This works in your best interest to bump up your current offer.
I have found that most schools are not very particular about letting you know if they filled the position and/or you were not chosen. However, if they did let you know early, you could try asking the search committee (usually the chair) if she/he would be willing to give you feedback on your performance. Some others will tell you too late in the season (April or May or June) to be useful for your job search in the current year. Nevertheless, it is always good to ask for feedback. In my very first job hunt as a postdoctoral research associate in 2013, a search committee member told me that I had a few publications and that was important in their deliberations. Thus, I was able to bump up my publication the following year to get a tenure track job in the 2014 job cycle. For my most recent job hunt, the search committee of a school that I got a reject after campus interview, was kind enough to give me very detailed advice about my interview. This feedback came in mid-March, so I was able to use this valuable feedback in the last few schools I interviewed in April.
Negotiating the job offer: The job offer consists of all the things you would be needing to be a successful professor in the new school. The job offers includes, a salary (usually 9 month in academia), summer support for first two or three years, graduate student / postdoc support, reduced teaching load for the first few years, money for travel to conferences, moving allowances, and most importantly equipment and lab space (if you need the latter two).
The job offer will usually come via email or phone call from the Department Chair. The first thing the Department Chair would want to know is your equipment needs as this is the most variable part of the job offer. Because you are already a successful tenure track professor this is where you have a huge advantage as you would know what you need to be successful. You are expected to give an itemized list with costs and justification. I recommend adding another column indicating if the particular equipment would be useful to other faculty within the Department. That way it shows your intention to collaborate. Likewise, if there is a piece of existing equipment in the school you should put it in the list and indicate a cost of zero, thus showing that you are cognizant of current equipment in the school. The necessary information about available equipment is something you will have to figure out when you talk with the faculty members in-person during the campus interview. Its good to ask for a little more than you need. That is because there is a chance that your plans may change or there is better equipment available when you start so the extra money gives you some leverage. If you developed some custom-equipment or have specialized equipment in your current school and that is very specific to your research, you might be able to buy that from your current school at a reduced rate and take it to the new school. You should put your best guess estimate for buying the equipment (i.e., costs after depreciation and moving costs).
Once you provide your list of equipment to the chair, she/he will return either accepting your request or lowering the money you asked for citing his/her limitations. It is up to you to either negotiate back or accept the offer on the equipment. At this point (second email/call) the chair will also tell you about other things in the package such as 9-month salary, summer support, graduate student support, travel support, moving allowances, etc. Although all these things are mostly standard (salary takes into account your experience and current pay scales of faculty members), it is possible to negotiate all of them. However, I would only recommend negotiating a few of them but not all of them as this might send the wrong signals unless of course, the chair low balled you on all of them.
Your 9-month salary is an important financial remuneration for you. Because salary compounds through yearly merit raise, a higher salary means more money to you over the long run. For most public schools, salaries are posted online and may be searched. For private schools, you will have to either rely on the chair’s judgment or ask the faculty for more information. The summer support, graduate student support, and travel support are usually fixed for all incoming faculty but you could potentially negotiate one or more if you have very good justification. The moving expenses cover the cost for you and your family to move from your current school to the new school. This is not the cost for house hunting and usually needs to be negotiated separately.
There are other things that you might need to negotiate. For example, a spousal hire either as faculty or other appropriate position in the University. Many schools do have a dual career hiring policy which may work well in your favor. Sometimes you may able to negotiate how many years of tenure track experience in your previous institution would be counted towards your tenure in your new school. Another issue, not faced by new tenure track faculty, is to negotiate the transfer of your PhD students to the new school (e.g., course credit transfer, qualifier exams, proposal/defense timeline). Such things are usually not on the offer letter so you have to negotiate them as well as get it in writing (personal email will do) so that you can bring them up as needed. At this point, it is also important to emphasize that it is best to do job offer negotiations using your personal email account so that you have a record of everything that was informally communicated.
At this point, if you have not heard back from any other school, you can email them to let them know that you already have an offer. If you are a strong candidate in the other school they will likely come back quickly with an offer. You can then use the two offers against each other to get more of what you need.
Just remember that after you get the offer, it is expected that you will decide one way or the other in about 2 weeks unless there are exceptional circumstances (e.g., spouse interview). This is because most likely the school has other candidates in mind and they would like to move quickly, else they will end with a failed search. So be mindful that you cannot simply buy time.
Getting the counteroffer: Once you have a job offer from an outside school, you can seek a counteroffer from your current school. A counteroffer is an offer made by your current school to keep you from taking an outside offer. While I did not seek the counteroffer, you might have reasons to do so.
Many schools have a policy on faculty retention (usually a handbook of policies and is usually available online). Besides reading that, you should also try to discreetly find out if your Department/College/University entertains a counteroffer and seek information about past cases.
Usually, you need a detailed offer (an unofficial email will do) to seek the counteroffer. When you go for the counteroffer you must be clear on what you are going to accept from your current school to stay. These could be things such as higher pay, spousal hire, equipment money, lab space, etc. Be mindful that in certain cases (e.g., you don’t have a competitive offer), your school will not give you a counteroffer. Also, a general rule is that you can seek a counteroffer only once in any school, so be strategic about the timing and external factors (e.g., the strength of your job offer).
After accepting the offer: Once you sign the paperwork from the new school and return it, you are officially set to move to a different school, which means you need to resign from your job at the current University. First of all, it is always a good idea to check the rules and regulation about faculty resignations in your (now) previous school. There are likely documents (e.g., handbook of policies) posted online. In my previous school, the handbook of policies was posted online and indicated that there was no notice period for faculty resignations (e.g., two weeks in most companies). But the only requirement was that faculty should resign at the end of the term (e.g., Fall, Spring, Summer) so that it does not affect the classes that you are teaching. Thus, technically you can resign as late as the beginning of the Fall term and be within the terms of the school. However, it is always a good idea to let the Chair know that you intend to resign as early as possible (but only after you sign the offer) about your intentions. This will give the Chair enough time to find a substitute teacher to teach the classes that you were assigned in the Fall and is a professional courtesy. In my case, I told the Department chair about 2 months before Fall classes started giving him ample time to find a replacement instructor.
Your graduate students (i.e., MS and PhD) are going to be affected by your decision too and you should let them know as soon as possible. In my case, I told my PhD and MS student immediately after signing the job offer.
All three of my PhD students decided to move with me, two moved in Fall 2019 and one moved in Spring 2020. A colleague’s PhD student also decided to come with me. Thus, I ended up getting 4 PhD students transferred to the new school. I had 4 MS students working on their thesis and I was able to graduate 3 of them while the fourth transferred to another faculty and he graduated end of Spring 2020.
Preparing the transition: As you near the transition, there are a bunch of things to take care in your school (e.g., graduate/transfer your students, taking care of teaching, etc.). The major one being submitting your resignation letter to the chair/dean. In the case of resignation letter be mindful about the resignation date because if you are getting paid in the summer, you might lose some pay if you resign too early. Also, you will lose access to your email so items such as pay stubs, grant information, etc. would need to be backed up before you lose access.
If you were planning to buy some of your custom-equipment from your old school then this is a good time to start the negotiations. Also, initiate the grant transfer after you have appropriate authorization in the new school. In my case, the new school processed an adjunct (no pay) appointment before my start date so I had an official email to initiate the grant transfer. If you have any dues in the old school including books do settle them as soon as you can. You might have to touch base with the human resources department to do any final paperwork. Such paperwork might include leave donations, getting health insurance during transition (known as COBRA), and giving your new address to get the tax documentation mailed to you.
Get a mentor: I cannot emphasize this more, find a mentor (usually a professor in another school and not necessarily in your field of specialization) who is genuinely interested in your success and who can provide you with sound advice as needed. I was lucky enough to have a great mentor who provided vital advice at critical junctures that helped me get the best of the mid-tenure job hunt.
Timeline: The application starts one year before the tentative start date. For example, if you are going to join in Fall 2020 then you start in July 2019.
More tips (NEW): Since posting the above writeup, I have helped a few people with their job hunt. The notes below are additional tips based on these interactions.