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Negotiating a Job with Multiple Offers in Hand (Leiter)

Brian Leiter

A student on the job market who is in the enviable position of having multiple offers writes with some questions about what kind of negotiation is appropriate for a candidate in his/her situation. 

1. What sort of things can one negotiate about? (salary? sabbatical? teaching relief? benefits?)

2. How much money/time/etc. are we talking about here?

3. Who is my natural ally in this endeavor? Here is what it seems like to me:

   — Other junior faculty at the institution would be willing to try to help (telling me what worked for them, etc.).

   — The chair, to some degree. The chair wants to help me, but he (or she) needs to get along with the dean too.

   — As far as I can tell, it is mainly the Dean that is trying to keep my salary as low as possible.

4. What sort of things would people find insulting? How might you step on people’s toes? It is a foreign enough project for me that I’m worried I’m going to make a faux pas.

5. (related) Are there risks to asking if there is anything they can do to improve the offer? I don’t want to alienate my future chair…

For purposes of discussion let us suppose that A is a top 10-15 PhD-granting department, while X is a PhD-granting program at a research university, but not in the very top ranks.  I set out some of my initial thoughts, below.  I have opened comments below and invite readers to concur, correct, or amplify, as seems appropriate.  I do not have a clear sense of whether non-research universities will negotiate about terms of employment, and so invite readers to comment on that in particular.  My comments shall be premised on the idea that we are talking about research universities, where I know such negotiation is common.

1.  Negotiation–but always approach it delicately!–seems to me appropriate in the following circumstances:  (a) you have offers from comparable departments and the terms (salary [taking some account of cost-of-living], teaching or other duties, research support) differ in significanct ways; or (b) you have an offer from A, and you want to negotiate with X in the spirit of getting X to offer you an inducement to join them.  These are the two best situations in which to raise questions about the terms of employment.  You could, of course, ask A to match X’s terms, but, in general, I don’t recommend it, and you had better be prepared to go to X at the end of the day if you go that route. 

2.  Topics for negotiation most commonly include salary (but bear in mind cost-of-living!), research leave, research and travel support, and (less often for a junior) teaching load.  (Perhaps most important for junior faculty is stability of your courses:  preparation is time-consuming, and it is very helpful to have a set of courses that you can repeat year after year while on tenure-track.)  If X has offered you 60K and A has made you an offer of 65K, it isn’t crazy to see what X is willing to do on salary to get you to go to X over A.  If A and B–both top 10-15 departments let us suppose–have offered you 65K, but B gives you 3K per year for travel, and A guarantees only 1K, it seems quite fair (esp. if you prefer A!) to ask A if they can do better.  (Benefits are rarely, if ever, open to negotiation:  health, disability and life insurance, retirement plans, educational benefits, etc. are almost always set at a university-wide level:  no department or college will have control over them.)

3.  My inclination is to think that it is a bad idea to say, "Can you improve the offer?" in the abstract.  Be concrete.  If you have a spouse and a kid, it seems to me quite fair to say to A, "I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join your wonderful department, but X is offering so much more that I’m not sure I can support the family.  Is there any chance that you can offer a better salary?"  If you have the offer from A, but are thinking about X, it is not unreasonable, in the current market, to expect X to pay a bit of a premium–in salary, or support, or leave–to get you.

4.  Chairs do, indeed, serve under (and sometimes at the pleasure of) their Deans.  But any negotiation must start with the Chair.  Read the signals carefully!

Bear in mind that particular institutions, regardless of "prestige," may operate under all kinds of constraints.   Some may feel that they are so wonderful that they do not need to meet any outside offers.  Some may have a strong internal norm regarding equity of treatment:  why should you get more than the Asst Prof hired last year, who, as a matter of pure chance, didn’t have an outside offer?  You may have received an offer on a divided vote, which means the department will not be at all disposed to cutting a special deal.  And so on.

Non-anonymous comments stand a much better chance of being approved; please post only once, as comments may take awhile to appear.

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10 responses to “Negotiating a Job with Multiple Offers in Hand (Leiter)”

  1. Tim O'Keefe

    I have a slight disagreement with part of Brian's point 1 above. Especially if you have a higher salary offer on the table from elsewhere (whether or not the place is less prestigious), you have little to lose by seeing if University A is willing to sweeten its offer to you. Nobody is going to hold it against you if you ask, they say 'no,' and you decide to go to A anyway.

    Here are two things that I think *will* cheese off faculty members:

    –Negotiating in bad faith. Don't ask for something from University X if there is no chance you'd go to X even if they agree.

    –Dithering. University X might be almost as excited by the prospect of getting candidate B as they are about getting you, and candidate B would be thrilled to go to X. But she has an OK job offer, time-limited, from University Y. If you hew and haw and end up going to University A anyway, you might screw both University X and candidate B. So tough negotiation back and forth is fine, but try not to string things out any longer than necessary.

    Reply
  2. Thom Brooks

    I would happily amplify everything Brian says above. There seems nothing inappropriate about asking a university if it might improve its offer, most especially if you have a better offer in hand from a comparable university. I say this with at least a few caveats:

    1. I would think it inappropriate to be pushy. These things are delicate and will probably involve the Chair having to influence the Dean. Pushy candidates can be off-putting and you want your Chair to be motivated to take up your cause.

    2. Do keep in mind only a few items will be on the menu, such as salary, and then only within certain constraints. You're not going to become the new ace in the Boston Red Sox bullpen: you're a new junior member of staff.

    3. I think the standard of living change is an excellent point to keep in mind. However, if one did not have multiple offers and if one is only coming onto the job scene for the first time, I do think that matters, such as the standard of living, are immaterial and one should gracefully accept whatever offer is on the table so long as it is reasonable. One only truly has bargaining power is one has cards left to play.

    I doubt any of these small caveats go against Brian's recommendations. Again, I only want to amplify his wise counsel.

    Reply
  3. Ron Mallon

    I would add that you might want to discuss:
    (a) Computers: what you will get, when it will be replaced, whether you can get a laptop and a desktop and so forth. Though this is a form of research support, it may be separately budgeted, and you may also have special needs.
    (b) Relocation expenses: these are one-time expenses a department may be willing to cover (and that can be onerous for an individual or family, especially straight out of graduate school).

    Reply
  4. dan kaufman

    Three things to consider:
    (1) Whereas a school might drag its feet on salary, there is usually other money to be had. For instance, a candidate could ask for a 'start-up' to be used for research, travel, etc. My very limited experience indicates that schools are much more willing to give a one-time lump sum start-up than to bump up salary significantly. Salary is a long-term commitment, but a start-up is not.
    (2) I agree with O'Keefe's comment about 'playing' a department when there is no chance you would accept *any* offer they would make. In fact, once i received an offer from my current department, i cancelled my other campus visits. It just seemed sleazy to go through the motions when i was absolutely sure that i would not have accepted their offer, no matter what.
    (3) Once again, i have limited experience with this, but it seems to me that a school will not do anything more than what they *must* do to get a candidate. So, if a there is something a candidate *really* wants (and is reasonable to request), the candidate should be very upfront about this. but, in the famous words of dalton from the classic motion picture ROAD HOUSE, "be nice,…until it is time to not be nice"

    Reply
  5. Simon Cabulea May

    International people in the US should also make sure to negotiate about expenses for visas and permanent residency applications. These can be onerous, and recent information indicates that the DHS is considering increasing the fees for various applications significantly. Moreover, almost no-one includes these costs on their list of things to negotiate.

    For H1-B visas, the employer is required by law to pay for the application fee (about $200 when I applied). However, applications can take months to process, so it may be necessary to pay an expedition fee of $1000 (this may have increased). I don't believe that this is necessarily covered by the employer. (Also, make sure your passport is not about to expire soon, since getting a new one will take a while and will delay the process, hence increasing the likelihood that you will need to expedite the H1-B application).

    Green card applications are the real problem, however. Government fees are now a few hundred dollars, but set to increase dramatically. Legal fees, however, can be a few thousand dollars. Add to this if you are married to a non-citizen. You may also need to pay a couple of hundred dollars for your I-693 medical exam (which is probably not covered by your medical insurance). In essence, get your new department chair to check up on university policy covering reimbursement for such expenses, and negotiate to have as much of it covered as possible, for you and your spouse: government, lawyers, doctors, the whole shebang.

    Reply
  6. Fritz Alhoff

    Whle Brian mentions "research leave", I wanted to clarify/amplify that this often comes in terms of course reductions for junior faculty, and these are definitely up for discussion during negotiations. Most research schools offer at least one of these (usually for use sometime during the first year), and I've heard of as many as three. Of course, somebody has to pay to have your course replaced (though, in some cases, it might just be canceled), but this is worth talking to someone about. Regarding Ron's comments about computers, *check* to see whether these "start-up funds" can be used for other things (like desks); I had to go all the way up to the dean to "re-allocate" some of this funding.

    Reply
  7. Jacob T. Levy

    No one's mentioned summer salary, but new mint PhDs might not know about it. Most American universities offer "nine month" salaries, albeit spread over twelve paychecks. Those in the hard sciences often get the 'missing' 2/9 or 3/9 salary in NSF or NIH grants. But there's also often the possibility for a couple of years worth of startup summer salary at the beginning of junior contracts– either a number of ninths (of that year's base salary) guaranteed for the first 1-3 summers, or a number of ninths that the candidate can allocate over the first two or three summers. 2/9 guaranteed for three years is very generous and rare, 3/9 that can be allocated over two summers much more common.

    This is the rough equivalent of a signing bonus– a significant one- or two-year bump in pay that does *not* go into your base salary and so is not used as the baseline when future percentage raises are made available. That means that universities can sometimes afford to be more generous with summer salary than with base salary, and also means that– unless they desperately need the cash infusion their first summer out of grad school– candidates have good reason to prefer base salary. But summer salary is often a way of bridging the gap between a candidate's hoped-for income and the maximum salary offer the university is willing to make.

    Reply
  8. Ben Caplan

    If you're interested in school X, and there's something you want that they're not offering, and you know you would accept if they offered it, you can always tell the chair (nicely, of course) that, although you're not saying that you won't accept if they don't offer it, you *will* accept if they do. This might help the chair get the dean to agree, since deans might like knowing that something will be a done deal.

    Reply
  9. anonymous

    I don't want to post this using my name, but a consideration you omit in your reply to the person with multiple offers concerns contract renewal. In some departments, renewal is more or less pro forma, whereas at others it's a huge hurdle. In effect, you are not given 5-6 years to prove tenurability, but 2-3 to prove expected tenurability. I had four job offers to choose from, and unwittingly landed in a job where renewal was a huge hurdle. I encourage the person with multiple offers to ask a lot of questions about this (and about tenure expectations too, of course). This isn't negotiable, but it's an important consideration.

    Reply
  10. Brad

    I have been reading this blog for a few days and am very excited to see a philosophy blog with a lot of activity and diversity. I am a software engineer but am pursuing a 2nd BA in philosophy. I have recently been thinking of pursuing a PhD in philosophy with thoughts towards pursuing a goal of becoming a professor. I am curious what your readers, particularly those that are professors, might say to someone in my boat – someone who has a stable, relatively high-paying job but finds the idea of teaching and doing research in philosophy far more appealing. What kind of salary can one expect as a first year professor? Are there opportunities to earn more? What does one tell one's girlfriend? 🙂 Finally, can anyone speak on the intangible rewards of teaching philosophy or being a professor. It is hard to find basic facts about what to expect from an entry level teaching post in philosophy. Any thoughts from your readers would be very helpful and informative.

    Brad

    Reply

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