Timing can be everything when it comes to a job change. Is it too soon to make a move? How do you present yourself as a candidate after spending a long time at one institution? And if you wait too long, will you be viewed as too old to be a strong candidate?
We'll start with the question of how quickly you can move after taking a new position. Let me say first that there is a vast difference between changing jobs within an institution, and moving to a new institution. Particularly if the sequence of jobs you hold within one institution looks like a series of steps up, few search committees will frown on that. The critical question in this column is when you should move to another institution.
The greatest hazard is moving too quickly. There is a lot of concern in higher education about people who hold jobs for only a year or two before moving on (heightened by the attention to E. Gordon Gee's move recently from Brown University to Vanderbilt University only two years after he arrived), and about people who are known to be on the job market soon after arriving at a new position.
Sometimes the decision to move isn't fully in your control -- you may be following a spouse, or moving to be near an ailing relative. But in all cases, you will be held accountable for the pattern of job changes in your career, and you will need to find ways of talking about this pattern to search committees. The underlying concerns are generally whether you are moving quickly because you are unsuccessful in the position you're leaving, and whether you are going to accept a new position and leave quickly again, just as you have done before.
Most readers of your résumé will take a close look at the length of time you stayed at each position, and often search committees will ask why you moved from one institution to another, regardless of how long you stayed. If you moved quickly (defined for our purposes as less than three years), they will also ask why. If you moved quickly more than once, they will be concerned. If you moved quickly more than twice, they may stop considering you for the position.
So if you are thinking about moving on after just a year or two in your job, you can probably do it without penalty, unless for some reason you move quickly from your next job as well. The moral of this story: Any time you are considering changing jobs after only a brief stint, think about whether you can possibly stay another year or two in order to keep from placing a permanent red flag on your résumé.
If you decide to make a rapid move, you will want to think about how to talk about this to others. Some candidates think that they can say, "A headhunter recruited me," conveying that they were highly desirable and simply couldn't hold out against a barrage of recruiting. I find that very unconvincing. No matter how good the headhunter, and how generous the institution's offer, in the end it's your decision; if you succumbed to a headhunter once, will you be likely to do it again and leave again quickly?
Other candidates describing a rapid move will have to discuss conflict in the positions they left, and often they will want to say that it was someone else's fault -- a difficult boss, uncooperative colleagues, a generally toxic institutional situation, etc. Be careful with this line of explanation; finger-pointing, especially at individuals, is rarely wise and always leaves the question of whether someone more skilled than you could have managed the situation and continued to be effective in the position. If you left an ugly situation, try to offer a balanced interpretation, perhaps with a judicious amount of self-criticism if you think that is warranted, and without personal attacks on others.
Let's turn now to the question of staying too long.
There are many people, especially those who began as faculty members and then moved into administration, who stay for 15 or 20 years at one institution and then decide they would like to move on to another administrative position. The main questions raised by a search committee considering this kind of candidate is, do they have only a limited understanding of institutional challenges and strategies -- an understanding derived from working in only one situation? Committees may also ask why a candidate wasn't moved up the ladder after spending so long at one institution.
The challenge for you as a candidate is to show that, in fact, you were called upon to play significant institutional roles at your current institution, and that you were involved in national associations, partnerships with other institutions, accreditation, and other projects that give you a broader understanding. Someone in this situation needs to be very careful in conversations with search committees not to refer constantly to the way things are done at their current institution, but to draw examples from other institutions as well, thus emphasizing the breadth of experience they would bring.
Finally, I want to talk about the timing question faced by people in their 50's who suspect that, if they don't move soon, they will be too old to be an attractive candidate.
The age-related issues on the minds of search committees have several themes: There is a concern, especially when hiring for senior positions, that a candidate over age 55 or so will not stay on the job more than a few years, preferring to retire, leaving the institution leaderless again and forcing them to do another time-consuming search. There is a related concern that someone of that age is more likely to become ill or die, shortening his or her tenure involuntarily. And there is the question of energy, sharpness of mind, freshness of ideas, etc.
Search committees can't ask questions about age and health, so some candidates may decide to volunteer information on those themes and then put a positive spin on their age. Most committees, even if they refrain from asking questions about age, are quite concerned about it. Each candidate will need to decide for himself or herself how to handle this.
To sum up, moving quickly or slowly is rarely in itself a fatal problem, but it's something that you as a candidate need to think about carefully, both as you make career decisions and as you talk to search committees about the decisions you've made.
