Making Early Offers

As I mentioned in my last entry, I offered jobs to two candidates last week, and I suspect I will be able to make another offer this week. One of our candidates — who looks outstanding — has verbally accepted our offer, and we are preparing the paperwork to send her a contract and formal letter. I expect to speak to the other candidate soon, and since that one, too, looks to be a wonderful fit in every way, I am hoping that she will join us as well.

My academic discipline is English. The hiring schedule of the Modern Language Asosciation is bred in my bones: applications by November 15, interviews at MLA in late December, campus visits in January or February, and a completed search as soon thereafter as possible. But this year, we are interviewing candidates on the campus now in hopes of making offers and maybe even getting acceptances before the winter break.

There’s a part of me that worries about whether that pace is the right one for searches. We have probably lost one outstanding candidate to whom we had offered a position because he wants to pursue other interview opportunities that are occurring on a more conventional schedule. But we have also already hired two highly promising assistant professors who might well not have been around in January or February. So, based on a very small sample size, our strategy seems to work pretty well.

But really, there is no way of knowing what would have happened had we employed the usual search strategy. And we don’t know how much the recession has been a factor in motivating candidates to accept our offers, out of fear that a weak hiring market may bring no others. We have a lot of offer as an institution and I am comfortable making these early moves but I will need go go through more searchers to understand how well this strategy works.

What has been your experience with making early job offers to candidates, before the usual academic hiring schedule?