My office phone rang a few weeks ago, and, for a moment, it seemed like my job search in student services would be remarkably short. The caller ID displayed the name of my college's provost, a woman who had interviewed me just two weeks earlier for a division manager's position on our campus.
I had good reasons to feel a preliminary spark of celebration. I was one of two finalists for the job, and HR had contacted my references, which, at my institution, is usually a sign that you are the first choice. My interview with the provost had been one of the best I've ever had; it had felt more like a conversation among like-minded colleagues than an interview. Besides, here she was calling. At my college, calls mean good news. Bad news arrives via the post office two weeks after the name of the person hired instead of you is announced via the campus newsletter.
I answered the phone and had a lovely conversation with the provost. We don't usually do this, she said, but I wanted to let you know personally that you didn't get the job. Then she told me I was a strong applicant and had a bright future. She was glad I worked for the college and hoped to get the chance to interview me again.
As I made polite conversation with the woman flattering and disappointing me, I couldn't help but feel a little bitter. This was the second time I'd been a finalist for a position at the division-manager level, and the second time I'd been shot down. While it was certainly nice to hear what a great applicant and asset to the institution I was, what I really wanted to hear was that I had gotten the job.
I allowed myself a few moments to wallow in self-pity before looking at my calendar to remind myself that I had another job interview scheduled for the next week. Another position at my current college, but several rungs higher up the ladder and about 30 percent higher on the pay scale.
The following week, that interview went well enough that when I got a phone call several days afterward, I let myself be hopeful once again. My mistake.
We don't usually do this, said the vice chancellor who called me, but I wanted to tell you personally that you didn't get the job. We think you're great though — a real asset to the institution. We're so glad you work here.
I hung up the phone and sat in my office, thinking about the other positions I had applied for. I began to feel decidedly claustrophobic.
I live in the West, in a place where there are wide open spaces and a relatively low cost of living. I live in a large metropolitan area, but there are meager choices for academic employment. There are more proprietary schools (which, for personal and professional reasons, I refuse to consider) than colleges or universities. There are two major academic employers, and I've already worked for both.
When I began my career in student services, I planned to move as often as necessary to make my way up the ladder. I have a natural sense of restlessness that has lent itself well to my professional advancement. I moved 2,000 miles away from home to go to college, then moved 2,000 miles back to attend graduate school and take my first professional position. I even moved 16,000 miles to work overseas when the opportunity presented itself.
And then, several years ago, I met, fell in love with, and married my husband. He has two children from his first marriage, and he gave up a tenure-track position to move to our town when his ex-wife took a job here. He took a non-tenure-track position at the university where he earned his Ph.D. and essentially put his career on hiatus. His children are in high school now, and for the last few years we've agreed that we wouldn't do any national job searches until they've both graduated.
I started my job hunt this academic year on the assumption that I would be limiting my search to the five or six institutions within a day's drive. So I was surprised when I returned home one night last week to find my husband scrolling through the job list for his field and printing out ads for positions in places like Illinois, Kansas, and North Carolina.
"There really is no future for us here," he said, and he might be right.
Our state-supported institutions are in the midst of a fiscal crisis, and the odds of a hiring freeze are good. The K-12 system is in terrible shape, and the community college in our county gets a large chunk of its money through property taxes, which wouldn't be a problem if we weren't in one of the foreclosure capitals of the country. In short, it is starting to look like we should get out while the getting is good.
We looked at the job list. We talked and talked about the effect of moving on his children. We talked about the effect of not moving on our careers. We looked at a map and made a list of places we could live, places with a higher density of higher-education institutions where we might both find positions. We've decided to go national, and I feel like I can breathe again.
In my first column, I mulled the difficulties of going on the market as a new mother. I still have those concerns, especially after my third job interview, when one of the interviewers asked me if I was sure I wanted a job with an unpredictable schedule that "would keep you away from that little one." But now those concerns are overshadowed by new concerns, like will we be able to sell our house?
We bought a reasonably priced home in a decent neighborhood, but now the house is probably worth less than we paid for it. What will we do if one or both of us gets a position and we can't sell the house? We've decided that we are unwilling to have a commuter marriage, especially given that one of us would have to functionally become a single parent to an infant. Would we be willing to sacrifice an ideal job to the gods of the real-estate market or sacrifice our credit scores and do a short sale? Or worse, a foreclosure? Buying the house was a major life milestone for me, something that was only possible after I paid off a tremendous amount of credit-card debt and accumulated a comfortable cushion of savings. It is somewhat unnerving to consider that I could find myself again in a position of financial instability, but now with a baby to care for. Is a new job worth that?
I now also have all of the concerns of a couple doing a two-body search, one that is somewhat complicated by the fact that the student-affairs field doesn't really have a hiring season like the one that governs my husband's academic discipline. We now have to weigh when I should send out applications. Should I wait to find out if he gets conference interviews or should I apply now, knowing that the turnaround time for a student-affairs search can be, but isn't always, faster than the academic-hiring process?
I didn't expect my husband to want to go on the market this year, and I find myself chafing a bit at the thought of becoming a trailing spouse. However, the reality is that a tenure-track job for my husband offers some advantages to our family that an administrative job for me might not, such as flexibility and the chance to do some work from home.
As of now, my husband has a small number of applications out and is waiting to hear if he has been selected for any conference interviews. Ever the optimist, I have applied for one additional position at my current college and have begun sending out applications to out-of-state institutions. Now we wait, and hope for the best, both for our applications and our property value.
