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Deciding Not to Close the Deal

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By Madison Randolph

The coincidence was so perfect that it had to mean something. I'd long ago made plans to visit a friend in another state over a three-day weekend. And in my daily scanning of the job ads, I'd found a listing for a faculty opening in that same city. The institution (let's call it Pioneer U.) is a smallish university, where I'd have both grad and undergrad courses and wouldn't be limited in the subjects I could teach. There was an administrative component to the job, which is alluring to me. And the campus was in a mid-sized city I had always liked.

Clearly, I needed to take the opportunity to "informally" see the place, and (if they were willing) to meet some of the faculty members in the department. I'd done this once before. In my first year on the job market, I'd actually landed an MLA interview at a small regional liberal-arts college. I'd been planning a cross-country drive home, and the college was on the way, so I stopped by the campus and met the department members. I thought things went well, and I went into the MLA interview (my first) optimistic. Maybe the visit came off as strange, or maybe it "jinxed" me, but I didn't end up on the shortlist.

Now my situation is different -- I have a job in academe and am looking for a new one. So I set aside my superstitions and called the department chairman. He seemed genuinely gratified at my interest, and set up a meeting for me with several department members. The long weekend came, and I spent an entire morning at the university, meeting dozens of faculty and staff members. I left thinking that this could be "The Job." The only problem was that Pioneer wanted its new faculty member to start in the spring semester, and I am obliged to my current employer until June. When I expressed this reservation to a member of Pioneer's English department, he intimated that if the search committee found the right person, its members might be willing to wait.

Things looked good, and I felt very positive about my chances. In addition, I left feeling like I'd given the Pioneer U. department a very accurate picture of what I'd be like as a colleague.

As I become more of a job-hunt veteran, this has become more important to me. I've grown more confident in my abilities, and less interested in making myself over in the image of what I think the search committee is looking for.

As I mentioned in my first column, I'm working in an administrative/academic job that isn't right for me. When I was an applicant for this position, I was willing to mold my personality to it in order to make sure I got the job. Any career counselor could have told me that that just predetermined my ultimate dissatisfaction. This job isn't right for me, I quickly learned, and I resolved in the future to be brutally honest with myself about whether jobs appear attractive because they're right for me, or because I might stand a realistic chance of landing them.

I can be more honest with search committees and with myself because even though I've been working largely as an administrator for the past few years, I think I'm a better faculty candidate for it. I've accomplished things -- I've initiated programs and achieved quantifiable, valued, recognized results from them. I've continued to teach and publish.

But I've also been improving in the intangibles: I'm more savvy about academic life, and I think I convey that in my interactions with search committees. Watching academic departments from the outside has helped me spot outward manifestations of the kind of internal strife that can make a new hire's life hellish. I'm smarter about getting what I want from professors, although my opinion of them has sunk (some professors can be patronizing or just plain rude to young administrators, even ones with Ph.D.'s).

My confidence about Pioneer grew as the fall jobs started to appear. I prepared some applications, but in a desultory fashion. Knowing I had a likely offer, I found myself automatically culling: I can't apply to that one, because my wife would rather live there than in Pioneer's city, and I don't want to be tempted; I should leave this Ivy Leaguer out, because if I have to accept Pioneer's offer right away I might always think about "what could have been." My wife and I started visualizing a life in Pioneer's city, even pricing houses.

Then came an e-mail message from the search committee chairman -- no surprise, he's been sending me periodic updates on the progress of the search -- saying that the committee needs a hard-and-fast commitment immediately about which of the candidates are able to start in January, and which aren't. Those candidates who could not be at Pioneer by January would have their applications set aside, the message said. In the event that no acceptable candidate arose from the pool of start-in-January applicants, the search would be extended.

I was floored. This was not a possibility I'd entertained. Subconsciously, I'd finessed this problem, even though it should have been clear from the beginning that it would ultimately present itself. I'm the one they want, I'd told myself, and they'll probably offer the job to me, make a token effort to get me there in January, and finally allow me to come over the summer. And when I had considered the possibility of being definitively asked to commit to January or drop out, I told myself that I could probably give up my current job and go. Pioneer's job was what I wanted in the end, so if I had to burn a bridge or two to get there, so be it.

My wife, though, disagreed. She told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn't break this contract, that I would be putting my current colleagues in a terrible position. Furthermore, this would stick to me: Professors from my university -- a very prominent one -- would talk, and I might get a reputation as an unreliable or even unethical colleague.

"What if Pioneer U. doesn't work out?" she asked. "You wouldn't be able to use your current colleagues as references after doing this." I feebly argued with her, but knew she was right. That's not the person I want to be. Had I agreed to start in January, I would have been doing it again -- trying to make myself something that I wasn't in order to make sure I landed a job.

Things might be different now, but this episode has made me realize that I'm still stuck in old habits, trying to close the deal before I'm 100 percent sure that it's the right deal for me. I thought back to David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, and his salesmen's mantra: "A-B-C. Always be closing."

If the six years I've spent on the academic job market have taught me anything, it's that as soon as you get any interest from a prospect, immediately move in and close the deal. I need to unlearn that. I would have done better to pay more attention to the end of Mamet's play, where the deals that seemed closed come apart because one of the parties wasn't completely sure or completely honest.

This job at Pioneer might actually be "The One," and the department may decide to hold off and fill it in the fall and may yet offer it to me, and if so I'll probably take it. But I think that closing that deal, as opposed to the one I rejected, won't leave anyone -- myself, Pioneer, or my current employer -- with buyer's regret.