Not unlike a professional baseball player in free agency, I am a Ph.D. candidate on the business school job market. Although none of my recruiters has offered up $252-million for my skills, I have learned that there are many teams, contracts, and venues for me to choose from in my job search, and I want to be coached by and play with the very best.
I have spent the first few months of this year happily and completely consumed by the recruiting process.
It began in early January when I mailed packets containing my vita, dissertation, working papers, and letters of recommendation to 20 top business schools across the country. As it turned out, half of those schools were not hiring, but I was fortunate enough to land campus interviews at seven of the ones that were.
Before I began my job search, my adviser told me how unlikely it would be for me to get offers from all of the schools I visited. He said I should be happy if I had a "couple of offers" so that I could at least choose. Choosing would be a luxury, I thought.
Although I flew to a variety of institutions, each visit was essentially the same -- hours of travel, the presentation of my dissertation paper, big meals, and innumerable meetings with faculty members. I knew that there would probably never be another time in my career when I would have so many people critiquing my research -- not to mention so many people wining and dining me. I received numerous constructive comments, made many new acquaintances, and gained at least 15 pounds.
Then I went home and waited for the phone to ring. After many false alarms, it finally happened -- my first offer. It was from a very good school and I was relieved to know that, at least, I had "a" job.
But it wasn't that simple. A couple of days later, I received my second offer, a few days later my third, and so on. (Ultimately I would receive six offers.)
Then came the onslaught of calls and e-mails. I began to get congratulatory messages from faculty members at many of the schools I visited. Other faculty members, as well as business-school deans, began calling to see if I had any questions, to encourage me to accept their offer, to ask if they were on "my radar screen," and to scope out their competition.
It became clear that in some cases a certain amount of gaming was going on and I began to feel a bit uncomfortable: Would I need an agent? With each day, the game intensified and the rules kept changing. While some schools made me an offer without a deadline attached for my decision, others provided explicit deadlines. Those deadlines appeared to be scheduled purposely to expire before I had heard from all of the schools at which I had interviewed. The terms of the deals were different from school to school. I was offered base salaries ranging from $115,000 to $130,000 a year. The teaching load varied, as did the availability and amount of summer research support.
As the acceptance deadlines approached, the process became even more stressful. At this point, I had received four offers, and I had been led to believe I was in the running at schools that had yet to make hiring decisions. Ideally, I would have liked to have known all of my options before making a decision, but that was a luxury I would not have.
It was time to start narrowing down my options. People suggested I rank my top choices and work down from there. But that was not as easy as it sounds. It is very difficult to get a feel for a university and its faculty in one or two days. Soliciting advice from others was not always helpful because different people seemed to have different perspectives on each school and on what would be best for me.
Throughout the process I kept hoping that I would find the perfect match. But I soon realized that each and every school possessed both positive and negative attributes. I was going to have to make some trade-offs. (Did Alex Rodriquez of the Texas Rangers have to make trade-offs?)
Rookies on the market from my Ph.D. program all face a certain amount of pressure to go to "top-tier" research schools because our placement has implications for the reputations of our program, our advisers, and our fellow students. Amid this pressure, it is almost impossible to maintain a balanced focus. Everyone wants to know the schools you visited, the schools you have offers from, the details of the offers, how many offers have been made, to whom other offers have been made, and the list goes on and on.
The day came when I had to decide on the offers with early deadlines. Should I go with a "sure thing" or continue to play the game? I chose to continue to play -- to wait until I had heard from the other schools in my set, and let the offers with deadlines lapse.
Looking back, I believe that was a good strategy. The one sour note came late in the game when I did not get a job offer from my top choice. My season batting average was .857, and I was thankful for that. But success can spoil you. Since I knew that I was a finalist at my top choice and I had received offers from every other campus where I had interviewed, I'll admit I was very disappointed not to get the nod.
I know that I am extremely fortunate, but good fortune is not without its costs. I am drained. In the bottom of the ninth inning, while I thought I would hit a home run, instead I hit a line drive to center field. I rounded first base and slid safely into second to end the game.
Next season, I will be on the tenure track with a team of faculty members at a large university in the Midwest. I chose this team because it has a great reputation, but most importantly, because its players have something I found to be unique in the business-school recruiting game -- heart.
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Business schools, expanding their course offerings to meet student demand, are engaged in a bidding war for the few new Ph.D.'s in the field.
